The Barbeardian

Heat (1995)

Jez: I've got Heat on DVD at home. We're watching this, when for less money we could be watching Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Mark: I'm going to pretend I am watching Heat.
-Peep Show

Hey Barbeardians, this is Ian here to tell you why one of my favorite TV shows had it right--watching Heat is better than anything else, pretty much ever.



Directed by Michael Mann, Heat is a 3-hour long heist movie filled to the brim with gunfights, people getting the shit beat out of them, and two great actors pulling out all the stops in every scene. You see, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino being in the same movie together was a huge deal when Heat was released. It was the studio's main marketing tool, despite the fact they only have two scenes together and they were also both in The Godfather Part II, albeit in different timelines.


Robert De Niro plays Neil McCauley, an expert thief planning a massive bank robbery with his team, comprised of Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Danny Trejo and some other guys that won't matter by the end. The score? 12 million dollars. These aren't the run of the mill, slip a note to the teller bank robbers though. They're fast, smart, armed with automatic weapons and won't hesitate to kill anyone who gets in their way (including the police).


Al Pacino is Vincent Hanna, an LAPD Lieutenant in the Robbery-Homicide Division. After he investigates one of McCauley's previous heists, he makes it his mission to take the whole team down, pretty much by any means necessary. He's willing to risk his personal life and most of his sanity for the sake of the job. Hot on the trail, he learns of the planned bank robbery.

Needless to say, it doesn't end well.

There are a ton of subplots I'm leaving out (it is three hours long, after all), but the relationship between De Niro and Pacino is what makes the entire movie work. Being on opposite sides of the law, you would think they'd have a mutual animosity towards each other. But they don't. If anything, they respect each other for how goddamned good they both are at what they do. The cat and mouse game they play is taken to the absolute extreme in the course of the film, leading to a frenzied shootout in the streets of downtown L.A. that's nothing short of awesome.

If you haven't seen Heat, you're not a real man. Plain and simple. If I ever have a son, I'm giving him Heat on DVD for his 13th birthday.

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