Product Description

An L.A. cop (Al Pacino) becomes fixated on a deadly thief (Robert Dinero) and his crew ( Val Kilmer & Jon Voight) who are taking Los Angeles to the cleaners. This movie includes one of the most spectacular shoot outs in film history as Dinero and Kilmer rip through downtown Los Angeles with both guns blazing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2746 in DVD
• Brand: PACINO,AL
• Released on: 2007-05-15
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 170 minutes

Features

• An L.A. cop (Al Pacino) becomes fixated on a deadly thief (Robert Dinero) and his crew ( Val Kilmer & Jon Voight) who are taking Los Angeles to the cleaners. This movie includes one of the most spectacular shoot outs in film history as Dinero and Kilmer rip through downtown Los Angeles with both guns blazing. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R Age: 085391163169

Amazon.com essential video
Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives. Both are so devoted to their professions that their personal lives are a disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know, they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down. Mann's brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most riveting action sequences ever filmed--most notably a daylight siege that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, giving De Niro and Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Incredibly cool characters pull off violent yet debonair crimes in the heart of a supermodern American city: yes, it's a Michael Mann film. The moving spirit behind "Miami Vice" has turned his attention to Los Angeles, where an anguished cop (Al Pacino) goes head-to-head with a troubled villain (Robert De Niro). The movie looks happiest at night, but the feline grace of the camera's moves is betrayed by the portentous script; Diane Venora, as the detective's wife, has some particularly gruesome lines to deliver. The film, which runs on and on for nearly three hours, yearns to be much more than a thriller-it wants to diagnose the sickness of men's souls and convey the nobility of their pain. The irony is that as a thriller it works just fine; the set pieces, including an unstoppable gun battle outside a bank, are adrenaline dreams. The taciturn De Niro and the braying Pacino share a flawless scene over a cup of coffee, but the real honors go to Val Kilmer and Ashley Judd as a warring, loving couple. Kilmer can blow you away, with or without a gun. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Perhaps, Mann's Best
Writer-Director Michael Mann's 1995 Los Angeles crime saga, Heat, is perhaps his best film work. Without having to worry about niggling facts and real timelines to get in the way (and cause critics to point them out) like in later films Ali or The Insider, this creative character-driven piece of moviemaking mesmerizes through great lead and ensemble performances, direction, and storytelling. All three aspects work wonderfully in this tale of two opposing "crews" who go up against eachother on the streets of L.A.: a professional group of criminals led by master thief Neil MacCauley (Robert DeNiro) and LAPD's elite Metro Robbery/Homicide lead by Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino).

Both leads, as the story evolves, are cut from the same cloth: professional and dedicated to their chosen crafts--to a fault. Everything revolves around their jobs and nothing gets in their way, including the women in their personal lives: Justine Hanna (the very underrated Diane Venora) and the soon-to-be enlightened Eady (Amy Brenneman). It's the long-suffering Justine that nails her husband's true nature with her wifely realization: "You don't live with me, you live among the remnants of dead people. You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey ... and then you hunt them down. That's the only thing you're committed to. The rest is the mess you leave as you pass through."

And it's with that predator's sense that Vincent spots MacCauley's crew after the inital, spectacular armored truck robbery. He knows that a crew is in town who are good, skillful, and very dangerous ("At the drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll."). Which is also the exact description of their leader. However, in this case, the master thief is also growing weary of his trade...and the emotional discipline it requires."I am alone...I'm not lonely." he tells Eady after they first meet. His is a life that requires him be able to "walk out on in 30 seconds flat if (he) feels the heat around the corner." Neil is the moral antithesis for Vincent, but both will do whatever it takes to do what they do best. Eventually, both find out about the other half-way through the story.

The meeting on-screen for Neil and Vincent (a first for actors DeNiro and Pacino) is the movie's key dramatic sequence. This wary confrontation over coffee is one of the best moments put to film. It's not long, but it's one of those powerfully quiet scenes that resonates throughout the rest of the film. The irony of the situation is that each recognizes themselves in the other...and appreciate the professionalism they find. Both, through their conversation, also are cognizant of the fact that each will put the other down permanently, if need be. Some other reviewers have stated that is the only time they'll share the screen time in this movie. Not true. Heat's tense climax on the outskirts of LAX is another one of those great film scenes. Mann skillfully brings their chase and relationship to a poignantly moving close.

This film also has one of the best ensemble casts ever on celluloid: Pacino, DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Venora, Ashley Judd, Brenneman, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Ted Levine, Dennis Haysbert, William Fichtner, and a young Natalie Portman. All of them giving excellent performances to an equally well written Michael Mann script. Filmed all over my hometown, and in some of the best and bad spots of Los Angeles, Heat makes great use of the locales with some breathtaking cinematography. It also has one of my all-time favorite action sequences, the Bank Heist in downtown (tragically, a real-life bank shootout in L.A. of hauntingly similar proportions would happen a couple of years later). At almost three hours in length, it takes a committment, but the viewer will be well rewarded with drama highly praised for its depth in character development and exciting sequences. This was not only one of the best films of 1995, it was one of the best for that decade. Okay, I've convinced myself: it is Michael Mann's best.

A masterpiece
10 years after the release of Michael Mann's epic crime tour de force, Heat is still an absolute masterpiece. Originally a screenplay which sat on the shelf for almost twenty years before being greenlit, Heat is the perfect character driven crime drama. Mann pits Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as a dueling cop and crook whose lives bear stunning resemblances to themselves. Vincent (Pacino) becomes obsessed in his case to help escape the reality of his failing marriage, while Neil (De Niro) is a cool, calm, collected and disciplined master thief who, with his skilled team (including Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) are planning a heist which will change everyone involved forever. This portrait of these people and their failing personal lives sacrificed for their obsessive careers makes Heat the best film to come from Mann, and undoubtadly the best big budget crime drama to come out of the 90's. The face off between Pacino and De Niro is a film buff's dream, and the climactic LA shootout is possibly one of the best action sequences in cinematic history. The rest of the cast, which includes Jon Voight, Diane Venora, Natalie Portman, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Ted Levine, Kevin Gage, Denis Haysbert, William Fichtner, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, Tom Noonan, and Hank Azaria, does brilliant work. Truly a cinematic masterpiece. This new 2-disc Special Edition from Warner Bros. contains a great commentary from Mann and a few nice featurettes, but the deleted scenes are hardly worth watching and add nothing to the film.

What a total disappointment of a Blu-Ray! :( There should be laws against treating such a *great* movie like this!
This release truly was a gargantuan disappointment. "Heat" is one of my all-time favorites and Michael Mann one of my favorite directors. I actually did not have huge expectations to this first incarnation of Heat on Blu-Ray--knowing the problems that exist on both the original 1999 DVD release (which I might add was pretty ok at the time, but not by today's standards) and the subsequent 2005 "Special Edition" (which had some interesting extras and commentary, but no change to the feature itself.)

But I mean honestly, I am in awe that not only does this disc have basically _the same_ audio track (re-encoded into Dolby TrueHD)--complete with the same muffled audio which for the most part totally lacks any kind of force, and dialogue which in some places is so low it borders on being ridiculous.
I can honestly say that it had no improvement, whatsoever, over the Japanese DTS edition which was released a couple of years back (which also is far from perfect.)

Ok, granted. The audio is not 100%--that I might be able to live with. After all--this is close to being my favorite movie. However, it also has received a *minimal* upgrade on the video side.

No, I am not referring to the inherent film grain. This disc has many scenes which look like they are taken straight off the original DVD and upscaled to 1080p. The lack of detail is most prominent when pausing the movie at certain scenes. Background detail also varies strongly throughout. Yes, it is a Blu-Ray and obviously it will look better than the DVD but I have a quite respectable stack of older movies which completely puts this release in the dust. The bitrate is for the most part around 15-22Mbit/s, peaking at just under 30 in some cases; but seldom reaching this point.

Just to illustrate that minimal care has been given to the video aspect, note that it even has the _exact same_ color-change problem which occurs after Amy Brenneman's character (Eady) hangs up the phone with McCauley / De Niro (at 54:32)

While this is all bad enough, later on I actually notice that some of the dialogue has been *CUT OUT*. (Why haven't other reviewers noticed this?) Specifically where Diane Venora's character (Justine) is talking to Vincent Hanna / Pacino after the office party has ended. From the passage below, the first part ("you sift through the detritus") has been omitted(!). I actually had to rewind to verify this, as this kind of thing is pretty unusual, and not something I've noticed on any of the previous DVD versions:

You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey ... and then you hunt them down. That's the only thing you're committed to. The rest is the mess you leave as you pass through."

Just to make it clear--this was not some one-off problem with my disc or equipment causing it to skip ahead at that particular juncture. No drop-outs to the digital audio signal was witnessed either.

To me, cutting out dialogue (especially something as relevant and beautifully phrased) in such a fashion is completely baffling. I don't know what on earth happened to this release while it was mastered on Blu-Ray, but this just topped it all off and prompted me to eject the disc. I could not bear to see what other flaws or edits it might have been subjected to.

I might add that, never once have I not watched this movie to the end. And I have watched it probably 30 times. But this was truly an abysmal experience. Warner, are you listening? You have plenty of other awe-inspiring releases, and some which are decades older than this one which look (and some which sound) a zillion times better--Superman, North by Northwest, The Road Warrior, Bullitt, The Dirty Dozen--to name a few.

After I submit this review I will create a return request for this item. I urge all others who truly love this movie to do the same; and not put up with what is basically a repackaged & cut version of the original DVD.

What a waste of a truly great disc format.