LogFAQs > #983067957

jcgamer
I think old Al Pacinos kinda overrated - Ive only seen two performances of his I recall liking - Glengarry Glen Ross, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (and Dunkaccino, of course - thats a given). Here, he comes off as really over-the-top and almost like a cartoon character. The cast on the whole is really impressive, one of the best on the list, but the storytelling is ambitious to a fault, with the movie running about a half hour long and trying to cram in all these romantic subplots. The diner scene with Pacino and De Niro was built up as this big cinematic moment, but Michael Mann seemed to think just putting them in on-screen together was enough - didnt find it compelling at all. One thing I did appreciate was that De Niro walks out on his love interest exactly 30 seconds after realizing Pacino caught up to him at the hotel, alluding to his rule he repeats earlier in the film.

6/10

Johnbobb
Why I included it:
Aside from the fact that every Pacino/DeNiro pairing is pretty much guaranteed a spot? Heat's inclusion was never in question, holding a spot as arguably the top heist film of the 90s and one of the most acclaimed of all time. Between this and Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann was riding high in the 90s.

What I thought:
Honestly I was a little more lukewarm on it than I expected to be. Like it was definitely good, but even here Pacino and DeNiro weren't blowing me away like they were in the 70s. The relationships are a pretty central aspect of the film, and I think they're one of the biggest areas it falls flat, with Charlene's tiny warning to Val Kilmer standing out as probably the most intimate moment of the central relationships. It definitely gets really good in the last hour, but overall it just felt a little bloated in getting there. Also, whoever told Val Kilmer that he could pull off a ponytail owes him an apology.

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
aw hell nah robert de niro looks like my dad

Karo
This tale of a heist crew and the detectives chasing them, presented in a somewhat confusing manner that leads to me often not entirely sure which characters are gangsters and which are cops until about halfway through.
The scenario is paint-by-numbers and both the plot and characters are so incredibly generic that the movie quickly fades into the shadow of much better films in the genre. To add insult to injury, the movie is excruciatingly and unnecessarily long, with an almost three hour runtime and it doesn't get at all interesting until the last 30 minutes and that is a big problem.
Movies with the word heat in the title have not gone well for me, and this overblown slog that could use more safe-cracking and less jerry springer show is no different.