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List Price: $26.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 7223
Released: February 22, 2005 |
| Our Price: $14.85 |
| Used Price: $8.49 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro squarer off HEAT sizzles. A tale of a brilliant L.A. cop (Pacino) following the trail from a deadly armed robbery to a crew headed by an equally brilliant master thief (De Niro). Val Kilmer Jon Voight Tom Sizemore Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman co-star.Running Time: 172 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085392891924
Description of Heat (Two-Disc Special Edition):
Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives. Both are so devoted to their professions that their personal lives are a disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know, they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down. Mann's brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most riveting action sequences ever filmed--most notably a daylight siege that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, giving De Niro and Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. --Jeff Shannon
Heat (Two-Disc Special Edition) Reviews:
Awesome movie, but has some technical issues 
2008-06-15 - This is a great movie, don't get me wrong. The problem is though that I find myself having to constantly change the volume as I am watching it. Some of the dialogue seems practically silent so I turn it up, then they have loud music or a helicopter or something and bam, I think I've blown out my speakers. The movie is easily a five and this might just be me but having to constantly grab for the remote control when watching this movie has always taken away from the experience for me.
Heat! 
2008-06-09 - Heat is one of the best movies ever! This special edition is definitely the version to buy because the extra materials like the story of the real Neal McCauley is AWESOME!
A character-driven masterpiece
2008-05-28 - I don't know I missed seeing this terrific film when it first came out, but somehow I did. It's a brilliantly written, beautifully acted, deeply involving cops and robbers story, starring Al Pacino as police Lt. Vincent Hanna, a loud-mouthed sleuth with an ex-wife (and a not-happy current spouse) who always gets his man, and Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley, extremely skilled professional heist man. Both are rather thoughtful and analytical and there's a great scene where they sit down in a coffee shop and wax philosophical about their antagonistic relationship. The scene in which the good guys are surveiling the bad guys, only to discover that they are being examined through binoculars in turn, is also first rate. Val Kilmer plays a thoroughly scary shooter -- who, quite unexpectedly, appears to escape in the end. There are numerous interpersonal relationships, between Kilmer and his long-suffering wife (Ashley Judd) who warns him away, between Hanna and his wife and his messed-up stepdaughter (Natalie Portman), and between McCauley and a completely innocent bystander whom he comes to care for but whom he is also willing to leave behind on thirty seconds notice. All the numerous supporting roles are also very nicely done.
A Michael Mann Crime epic
2008-05-25 - This is a great film. It's characters are rich, complex and dark. It's visuals are stunning and modern. And it has both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro churning out amazing performances. This is a crime epic that follows the lives of both the criminals and the cops. It relates the two sides and compares there moral codes, revealing their similarities. Heat is an amazingly complex character study. Every character is three dimensional and that makes the action that much more intense. Speaking of action Heat has several of the best action scenes on film including an amazing bank heist and shootout filmed in downtown L.A. This is a Michael Mann masterpiece I highly recommend it.
Michael Mann's Theme 
2008-05-13 - Somebody, maybe Pauline Kael, talked about the pornography of violence. In that sense, Michael Mann makes pornographic films: very hard guys, very lovely women, very little dialog, and lots of automatic weapons fire and spattering blood sacks for the jaded audience. No actual humans need be portrayed, no actual interaction is therefore required; just pretty people banging away. Only Mann's films, pretending to be something other than what they are (not sure what, though), go on forever. At least porn's unpretentious and quick. Honest. Give it a try. Rent something XXX and compare it with "Heat." You'll see.
