I've wondered what my life would have been like if I had ended up being a criminal. I've had a hard life with many struggles, been treated poorly because of my ethnicity, used to be angry all the time, and had difficulty finding good jobs, a byproduct of not finishing college and getting a degree. So it doesn't seem too far-fetched for me to have chosen a life of crime. Luckily, I think I turned out all right, and even though I may not have found a cure for cancer, I can look back on my life and be proud of the things I've achieved.
I like to showcase underappreciated and underrated films in my blog, but this week, I want to feature a true classic from filmmaker Michael Mann (The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans, Miami Vice).
I've owned Heat on DVD, then Blu-ray, and have watched the film numerous times, but I haven't seen the movie in many years. I rewatched it recently, and it was like experiencing the film for the first time all over again. This time, I had a much greater appreciation for the cinematography and editing, and I wish I could have seen it on the big screen.
Written and directed by Michael Mann, Heat is remembered chiefly for the street shootout sequence in downtown Los Angeles and the famous scene in the diner with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, who were both in The Godfather: Part II, but were never seen together before in a movie.
Although it has action, I would not consider Heat an action movie per se. Instead, it's an epic white-collar crime drama with excellently-written characters and an engaging human story. Sure, there have been other movies about bank robberies, but Heat, which came out in 1995, set the bar extremely high and pretty much set the standard for heist movies. And I'm a huge fan of heist films, as I've showcased a number of them in Ted's MOVIE OF THE WEEK. In my opinion, Heat is a masterpiece that belongs in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
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