Top 250 Challenge: 229

Heat (1995)
Number 201 on IMDb's Top 250

Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is a thief... an expert thief... one of the best. His philosophy in life - become attached to nothing in life that you can't walk away from in 30 seconds if you spot the "Heat" around the corner. His crew of criminals is a high-tech outfit pulling off professional jobs that impress even the likes of Detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) . But Hanna, a man driven through life only by his work, becomes obsessed, at the expense of his private life, with bringing McCauley down. As McCauley's crew prepare for the score of a lifetime, and Hanna's team tries to bring him in, the two find that they are challenged by the greatest minds on the opposite side of the law that either one has ever encountered. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Filmed in 65 locations around Los Angeles, without a single soundstage. The cast was given weapons and tactics training by former British Special Air Service Sergeant Andy McNab. The first film to ever feature both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino acting together, which created much hype prior to release. They both starred in The Godfather: Part II (1974) but never shared the screen together as split chronology prevented this. When this movie was finally released, even its advertising material promoted the film as a De Niro/Pacino "showdown." The meeting between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino over coffee was shot at Kate Mantilini on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. The L.A. mainstay is a noted top spot for a stylish late supper. The restaurant now has "heat" spelled in neon above the door and a large poster of the actors in the now famous scene. Diners may request the very table featured in the scene, table #71, which wait staff are familiar with as "The Table", and are happy to seat De Niro/Pacino fans at their famous meeting place.

I am not a De Niro fan, I think I have said this before, he is good, and I will watch his movies, I just don't go out of my way to watch them. The same with Al Pacino, but together in this movie they were great. They both have strong characters to work with and seem evenly matched in their duel, in fact the crew of bad guys and the detectives of the major crime unit are all evenly matched, which is why the movie is so good. You don't know how it will end. Will Pacino get De Niro? Will De Niro get away? Having two strong actor like that could have any ending you wanted and the audience would approve, as opposed to having Pacino go after some Joe Shmoe where you know Pacino will not let this guy go, or De Niro facing off against Unknown Actor #1 where there is no one De Niro will fail to get away. The other interesting part of this movie is the way it treated the relationships with family/love interests and the guys on both sides. When was the last time you saw a crime action thriller include a scene where a detective's step-child (Natalie Portman), whose real father is a jerk, tries to commit suicide because her mother cheated on her step-father and they separated. Oh yeah, and there is a cool running gun-battle between the cops and the crew after a bank robbery. Val Kilmer states on the special edition DVD (in the making of featurette) that soldiers in the military are shown the bank robbery scene, with emphasis placed upon the scene where Kilmer's character fires on the police, performs a swift and smooth reload, and resumes firing. Supposedly they say something along the lines of, "If you can't change magazines as fast as this actor, get out of my army!" Go Val! (What kind of name is Val anyway? Is it short for Valerie?)

Next Up: Once Upon A Time In America, "As boys, they said they would die for each other. As men, they did." Uh-oh, two De Niro movies back-to-back? What was I thinking?