HEAT
Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voigt, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora. Dir. Michael Mann, Warner Bros., 1995On twitter I'm one of a few dozen people tweeting their four favorite movies for a given year, one year per each successive day. We started, as far as I know, at 1959. Today we're tweeting for 2014. (Mine:BOYHOOD, LEGO MOVIE, FURY, INTERSTELLAR.) No one says much, but years perceived as especially good get shoutouts, which means 1999 got its share of love. IN '99, as I recall, THE INSIDER made all the critical lists, did the awards-season tour, & movie fans, those I talked to, waxed rhapsodic. I also recall establishment critics of the time loving THE INSIDER & being divided on HEAT.
In the '99 lists I saw, THE INSIDER is no longer part of the 1999 discourse. HEAT never goes out of style on twitter. Everyday I see tweets of action stills, onesheets, whatever, leading me to tweet the movies I wish film twitter would STOP talking about ten days ago. HEAT ranked #2.
At the time, I did not own HEAT, nor had I seen it in close to ten years. Four days after that, I found the it & THE INSIDER at Goodwill for a couple bucks. I've watched it twice since Saturday.
It is, to my mind, Mann's magnum opus. He leaves everything on the screen with his '95 LA noir, possibly my favorite crime epic outside mob pictures. Mann paints on an enormous canvas and fills it with the assurance of the undervalued auteur, which pretty well defined his career at that point, when his biggest success, MIAMI VICE, was a small screen wonder. 1993's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS did well, finding an audience on cable/VHS, but also divided critics. Today I would argue MOHICANS is Daniel Day-Lewis's least-discussed role.
At the time, film critics didn't rate Mann as they would following THE INSIDER's success, & HEAT's length & violence earned a few brickbats. I know HEAT divided my friends. A regular moviegoing group of us debated the relative merits of a crime epic with Pacino, whom we saw as streaky, from the Miami Vice guy. A fan of MOHICANS, VICE, as well as THIEF & MANHUNTER, I was all-in on HEAT, but we compromised & saw 12 MONKEYS or COPYCAT or whatever was new & unsatisfying to all.
THE INSIDER sees Mann transfer his entire crime-movie methodology to what could be a decent ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN true-life thriller, recognizing that, at heart, THE INSIDER is also a crime story, the sort of crime committed in boardrooms "with the stroke of a fountain pen." In my memory the critics & movie lovers got behind that approach. I recall being apalled when Crowe received Best Actor not for either the preceding LA CONFIDENTIAL or THE INSIDER, but the derivative GLADIATOR.
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. I've seen HEAT many times since '95, THE INSIDER not at all since '01. HEAT popped up on cable more often, became one of those films I'd happily catch only part of, cut up on amc, and not care. THE INSIDER, after its initial honeymoon, disappeared. With understandable, not to say good, reason.
In seeing THE INSIDER as another kind if crime epic, and by putting most of HEAT's narrative & aesthetic soul into THE INSIDER, building & sustaining almost unbearable tension over two+ hours, finding the same pressure releases & catharses in the emotional/journalistic triumphs as in HEAT'S action setpieces, Mann dooms the two to comparison. In it, THE INSIDER doesn't come out "worse" as much as so like its predecessor it comes down to personal preference. Film Twitter and I give the nod to HEAT.
It has a few things THE INSIDER lacks, the most obvious being anything even a little like Pacino & DeNiro squaring off over coffee in an LA diner. That may be an unfair expectation, given the different dynamics between cast members, but the Pacino/DeNiro scene, critically derided as "ludicrous" in the day, culminates what many film fans now describe as one of the best chase scenes in the last 30 years, as Pacino tracks DeNiro from air to roadside, accompanied by Moby's searing cover of Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades."
At the time, film critics didn't rate Mann as they would following THE INSIDER's success, & HEAT's length & violence earned a few brickbats. I know HEAT divided my friends. A regular moviegoing group of us debated the relative merits of a crime epic with Pacino, whom we saw as streaky, from the Miami Vice guy. A fan of MOHICANS, VICE, as well as THIEF & MANHUNTER, I was all-in on HEAT, but we compromised & saw 12 MONKEYS or COPYCAT or whatever was new & unsatisfying to all.
THE INSIDER sees Mann transfer his entire crime-movie methodology to what could be a decent ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN true-life thriller, recognizing that, at heart, THE INSIDER is also a crime story, the sort of crime committed in boardrooms "with the stroke of a fountain pen." In my memory the critics & movie lovers got behind that approach. I recall being apalled when Crowe received Best Actor not for either the preceding LA CONFIDENTIAL or THE INSIDER, but the derivative GLADIATOR.
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. I've seen HEAT many times since '95, THE INSIDER not at all since '01. HEAT popped up on cable more often, became one of those films I'd happily catch only part of, cut up on amc, and not care. THE INSIDER, after its initial honeymoon, disappeared. With understandable, not to say good, reason.
In seeing THE INSIDER as another kind if crime epic, and by putting most of HEAT's narrative & aesthetic soul into THE INSIDER, building & sustaining almost unbearable tension over two+ hours, finding the same pressure releases & catharses in the emotional/journalistic triumphs as in HEAT'S action setpieces, Mann dooms the two to comparison. In it, THE INSIDER doesn't come out "worse" as much as so like its predecessor it comes down to personal preference. Film Twitter and I give the nod to HEAT.
It has a few things THE INSIDER lacks, the most obvious being anything even a little like Pacino & DeNiro squaring off over coffee in an LA diner. That may be an unfair expectation, given the different dynamics between cast members, but the Pacino/DeNiro scene, critically derided as "ludicrous" in the day, culminates what many film fans now describe as one of the best chase scenes in the last 30 years, as Pacino tracks DeNiro from air to roadside, accompanied by Moby's searing cover of Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades."
The entire sequence, starting with the first shot of the 'copter to DeNiro's last line, ranks in my mind with the baptism/murder montage IN THE GODFATHER or the "Layla" montage in GOODFELLAS. I bought the HEAT soundtrack so I could crank "New Dawn Fades" when I worked cutting & tossing dough on third shift a summer later. The gooseflesh still rose on my arms this morning. Ludicrous or not, their conversation takes a perfect pursuit sequence to an unlooked-for dramatic resolution that is as close to sui generis as I can think of.
My basic knock on THE INSIDER comes out to this:It's at its best when Pacino, Crowe, or both appear onscreen. In THE INSIDER's final reel, Christopher Plummer's Mike Wallace moves to the foreground, Crowe's Dr. Jeffery Wigand fading back, but Plummer's performance, offering the scenery-mastication Pacino largely eschews, doesn't play as well as Crowe's repressed, terrified family man against Pacino's restrained TV news producer, Lowell Bergman. Given the story's real life arc, that had to happen, but even though Wallace could be popmous & a braggart Plummer almost pulls me out of the movie. Apart from Henry Rollins, who hardly speaks, no performance in HEAT grates as Plummer in THE INSIDER.
My basic knock on THE INSIDER comes out to this:It's at its best when Pacino, Crowe, or both appear onscreen. In THE INSIDER's final reel, Christopher Plummer's Mike Wallace moves to the foreground, Crowe's Dr. Jeffery Wigand fading back, but Plummer's performance, offering the scenery-mastication Pacino largely eschews, doesn't play as well as Crowe's repressed, terrified family man against Pacino's restrained TV news producer, Lowell Bergman. Given the story's real life arc, that had to happen, but even though Wallace could be popmous & a braggart Plummer almost pulls me out of the movie. Apart from Henry Rollins, who hardly speaks, no performance in HEAT grates as Plummer in THE INSIDER.
Pacino, extraordinary in both films, puts paid to those already saying he substitutes overacting for the quiet intensity he tapped into in all those great '70s roles. Sure, Heat's Lt. Vincent Hanna erupts at times, but the times make sense within the story, and often provide the only light moments in the story. Pacino's Lowell Bergman erupts all the way up to a conversational volume level. He doesn't bellow. He does not need to. Bergman's integrity, his always-walked talk and his subdued, seething moral outrage are his verbal big sticks. Bergman whips Baker Hall's Don Hewlitt into a rage without getting out of mutter-range. The '90s saw Pacino reclaim his own after getting a little lost in the '80s. From 1989's SEA OF LOVE through to 2001's INSOMNIA, Pacino's roles number among both his & the decade's most memorable.
One thing I love about Michael Mann is his attention to casting. A TV guy, Mann deals often in closeups, knowing it's vital to find great faces. What sets Mann apart is his knack for finding actors with something behind the face. True in both films, apart from the Plummer misstep, I admired it somewhat more in THE INSIDER, for a couple reasons, one pure homerism.
Dickie Scruggs, the Mississippi attorney suing Big Tobacco, who deposes Crowe, looks in real life exactly like Irish actor Colm Feore, who plays him. I know because the now-disgraced Mr. Scruggs's law firm still dominated the western side of Oxford, Mississippi's Courthouse Square when I moved here 16 years ago.
The other reason is Russell Crowe. Yes, my name's also Russell, but THE INSIDER remains my favorite Crowe performance. Cast against type as an embittered man, a scientist who sold out his conscience for safety/security/status, Crowe looks puffy, out of shape, stressed out, not at all the intense, in-control action hero we expect. The intensity's still here, in abundance, but Crowe deploys it in smaller moments, more sparing about it. It is unlike almost any other Crowe role I can name, apart from maybe AMERICAN GANGSTER's unorthodox narco cop.
The first time I saw Diane Venora in THE INSIDER I tagged her as a "Lange-alike," her perm & honeyed Kentucky Belle formality calling Lange's more affected drawls to mind. I did NOT recognize her as Vincent Hanna's wife in HEAT. To me, they look opposite, not a little alike, and constitute such different sorts of women. Mann, more noted for his male characters, always comes up with strong women who go underpraised. Let that not be true of Ms. Venora, who deserves all kinds of raves for these two jobs, alone.
I started out this writeup with the thought of discussing making right choices for wrong reasons, & vice versa, & how that tallies with a treatment center definition of unmanageability as always making terrible choices. I can make that case for both films, I think, particularly the way all of Crowe & Pacino's good choices contain good motives, whereas HEAT's Neal MacAuley (DeNiro) tends to make wrong choices, such as getting involved with Edie or rescuing Chris, for the right, or at least understandable, reasons.
The other reason is Russell Crowe. Yes, my name's also Russell, but THE INSIDER remains my favorite Crowe performance. Cast against type as an embittered man, a scientist who sold out his conscience for safety/security/status, Crowe looks puffy, out of shape, stressed out, not at all the intense, in-control action hero we expect. The intensity's still here, in abundance, but Crowe deploys it in smaller moments, more sparing about it. It is unlike almost any other Crowe role I can name, apart from maybe AMERICAN GANGSTER's unorthodox narco cop.
The first time I saw Diane Venora in THE INSIDER I tagged her as a "Lange-alike," her perm & honeyed Kentucky Belle formality calling Lange's more affected drawls to mind. I did NOT recognize her as Vincent Hanna's wife in HEAT. To me, they look opposite, not a little alike, and constitute such different sorts of women. Mann, more noted for his male characters, always comes up with strong women who go underpraised. Let that not be true of Ms. Venora, who deserves all kinds of raves for these two jobs, alone.
I started out this writeup with the thought of discussing making right choices for wrong reasons, & vice versa, & how that tallies with a treatment center definition of unmanageability as always making terrible choices. I can make that case for both films, I think, particularly the way all of Crowe & Pacino's good choices contain good motives, whereas HEAT's Neal MacAuley (DeNiro) tends to make wrong choices, such as getting involved with Edie or rescuing Chris, for the right, or at least understandable, reasons.
I'm glad I did not get into that, though. Good case or bad, reducing a film to "it's about moral choices" &/or their long & short term consequences opens up the discussion to just about any movie. It's not a bad set of insights, but it's reductive & I don't want to reduce in conversation a genre film that transcends genre as HEAT does.
I'll watch THE INSIDER again, and again, for variety & particularly for Crowe & Pacino & Venora, but it's not Chinese rocket surgery why film fans still rave for HEAT, not so much for THE INSIDER. HEAT earns all of its reputation. One of the best of its decade.
THE INSIDER
Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Philip Baker Hall, Diane Venora. Dir. Michael Mann, 1999
I'll watch THE INSIDER again, and again, for variety & particularly for Crowe & Pacino & Venora, but it's not Chinese rocket surgery why film fans still rave for HEAT, not so much for THE INSIDER. HEAT earns all of its reputation. One of the best of its decade.
THE INSIDER
Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Philip Baker Hall, Diane Venora. Dir. Michael Mann, 1999
Comments
Post a Comment