Set in Los Angeles, Heat follows the parallel lives of two men.
               Neil McCauley (De Niro) is a career thief running a regular
               crew that includes old friends Chris (Val Kilmer), Michael
               (Tom Sizemore), and Trejo (Danny Trejo); Vincent Hanna
               (Pacino) is a robbery/homicide detective working on the
               McCauley crew's most recent job, an armored car heist. Both
               men are loners struggling with relationships: Hanna is working
               on his third wife, Justine (Diane Venora), while Neil is trying
               to start a romance with graphic designer Eady (Amy
               Brenneman). Both men are also consumed by their work, and
               when a tipster puts Vincent on Neil's tail, they are set up for a
               collision that will tear both of their lives apart.

    ------------------------------------------

"I do what I do best, I take scores. You do
what you do best, try to stop guys like
me." - Neil McCauley

--------------------------------------------

Still, Heat works in a big way when Mann focuses on the
               central conflict between the two stars. De Niro plays Neil
               McCauley with an affecting world-weariness, and he does a
               fine job with a scene at a restaurant in which he looks around
               at his friends with their loved ones and recognizes the
               emptiness of his own life.

Pacino is a live wire as the
               thrice-married but never domesticated Hanna, who watches
               his latest attempt at a normal life crumble with only token
               resistance. Their showcase scene together, in which their
               characters quietly discuss their respective chosen paths, is one
               of those special screen moments; you can see both Pacino and
               De Niro drawing on something extra, like rival sprinters in an
               Olympic race. Mann makes the most of showdowns between
               these two men who are both better at their jobs than at
               anything else, including one in which a botched surveillance
               turns into a wonderfully tense moment of complete silence.

Unfortunately, Mann isn't satisfied with a
               single battle of wills in a two-sided
               character study. He wants to present a
               grand canvas of lost souls, and Heat
               rapidly gets overloaded with characters and
               conflicts, none of which are given the time
               and attention they require. The contentious
               marriage between Chris and his wife,
               Charlene (Ashley Judd), the plight of a
               parolee (Dennis Haysbert) struggling to stay straight, and the
emotional problems of Hanna's stepdaughter (Natalie Portman)
               

are all interesting but needed more time if they were
               to avoid becoming a confusing bunch of stories about doomed
               men and long-suffering women. This is not even mentioning a
               subplot in which one minor character is made into a serial
               rapist for no apparent reason. Mann is quite skilled at
               pacing--Heat feels tightly constructed even at 2 hours and 45
               minutes--and the film has a great look with its night
               photography. It just seems a shame that when presented with
               the opportunity to highlight a historic screen pairing, Mann
               places them in an emotional "Where's Waldo" picture. If he
               were a journalist, they'd call it burying the lead.

---------------------------------------

Vincent Hanna
                   Al pacino
Neil McCauley
                   Robert De Niro
Chris Shirerlis
                   Val Kilmer
Nate
                   John Voight
Eady
                   Amy Brenneman
Charlene Shirerlis
                   Ashley Judd
Director
Michael Mann