Here’s How Michael Mann Made ‘Heat’s Heist Scene Legendary FSalinks

Beneath the Los Angeles skyline, a shimmering grid of blue city lights connects a vast number of people throughout the course of Michael Mann‘s 1995 masterpiece, Heat. The film is a large-scale crime epic that finds a robbery-homicide detective, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), caught in a fateful tail spin with career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and his proficient crew, including Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer). McCauley is a thorough, meticulous criminal, but he opens himself up to Eady (Amy Brenneman), a graphic designer, as the two develop a romantic connection. Hanna’s relentless pursuit and McCauley’s growing love for Eady threaten his ability to maintain his strict discipline.

Heat is one of the most critically and commercially successful films of Mann’s career, and immediately garnered an iconic reputation among cinema fans for being the first movie to put De Niro and Pacino on screen together, after they both appeared in The Godfather Part II, but had no shared screen time. Twenty years later, anticipation built toward the two legends coming face to face, and Mann’s expansive heist drama delivered exactly what people were looking for. Heat is now one of the most beloved movies of the 1990s, and its ever-growing legacy runs parallel to an increasing critical reclamation of Mann’s other works. Heat is the central work of Mann’s career, and the film’s largest set piece — the bank robbery and shootout — is Mann operating at his absolute apex as an action filmmaker.

Heat

A group of high-end professional thieves start to feel the heat from the LAPD when they unknowingly leave a verbal clue at their latest heist.

Release Date

December 15, 1995

Director

Michael Mann

Runtime

170 minutes

Studio

Warner Bros.

Michael Mann Makes ‘Heat’ So Much More Than a Crime Movie

Heat is one of the most acclaimed crime movies in modern history. However, the human drama at the heart of the story is so compelling that simply calling it a “crime movie” undercuts what makes it so special. The film follows Hanna and McCauley as their fates intertwine at the expense of their personal lives. The two men are endlessly, meticulously devoted to the chase, as De Niro’s ruthless criminal mastermind would shoot his way out of any pinch, and Pacino’s manic lawman won’t rest until he’s put the whole crew behind bars or in the ground.

The first half of Heat is fairly meditative. The film is cast in a melancholic, blue glow, and shot in long sequences that build out the motivations and personalities of each character. Mann is a filmmaker who tends to tell stories about masculinity, but the machismo of a character like McCauley is subverted in small moments of vulnerability and romance, like him leaving a glass of water on Eady’s bedside table after their first night together. Despite all of Mann’s movies following themes of men imprisoning themselves from feeling and living the way they ought to, there are always strong undercurrents of romance that add texture and life to each of his stories.

The slower pace that Heat takes when laying all of this groundwork leads to some incredible scenes of dialogue and smaller action set-pieces that act as preludes for the main event: the bank heist. Before we are treated to it, we are given one last moment of reflection as Hanna and McCauley meet face to face, meeting in a diner in one of the greatest scenes of Mann’s career. The two men develop a respect for one another as they trade insights into their motivations and personal lives, coming to an agreement that neither will stop doing what they do best.

‘Heat’s Iconic Bank Heist Scene Pits Robert De Niro Against Al Pacino

After the explosive armored truck robbery that opens the film, it is well over an hour before the next action set-piece. But nearly every story thread that is laid down during the film’s first half comes to a head during the massive bank robbery and subsequent shootout in the streets of Downtown Los Angeles. The heist itself went off without a hitch, and occurred quickly so as to emphasize the professional, efficient quality of the crew. But when McCauley’s guys are cut off during the getaway, things quickly turn sideways.

One of the most tragic characters in the film, an ex-convict and former friend of McCauley, Don Breedan (Dennis Haysbert), abruptly left his parole officer’s work recommendation to fill in for the getaway driver, and is the first of the crew to be killed. Breedan was set on a path to redeem his past wrongs, but abuse and wage theft at his new job proved that the life of an ex-convict would never be what it was before serving time. Breedan’s subplot crops up early in the film, and emphasizes the empathy that Mann extends toward people who turn to a life of crime out of desperation. Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore), another member of McCauley’s crew, is killed by Hanna at the conclusion of the shootout. In between, many officers are gunned down, including a key figure in Hanna’s squad, Detective Bosko (Ted Levine). The abrupt, violent deaths emphasize how the stakes of this shootout will greatly impact the story.

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The impressive set piece was shot on location in the city streets of Los Angeles. During filming, Mann captured live audio of the guns firing blank rounds, making for a sound mix that is likely to blow your speakers out when the deafening shots ring out. The gunfire echoing through the canyon of buildings builds an uncanny, unforgettable cacophony of sound that is a highlight of the sequence. Mann, being about as dedicated to his craft as McCauley and Hanna are to theirs, approached the shootout with a remarkable attention to detail. The actors were so well prepped that, per Esquire, Kilmer’s rifle technique has been shown to special forces as the proper way to reload. The characters involved in the shootout use expert marksmanship techniques, find cover, carefully watch their lines of sight, and reload in a manner that grounds the action.

The sequence is edited with choppy cuts and handheld shots that are in sharp contrast to Heat‘s earlier style and tone. At this point, all bets are off when the bullets go flying. Mann sets the camera right in the midst of the action, making it an incredibly immersive and visceral experience. And yet the blocking and staging establish such a strong understanding of spatial awareness (even when the characters are separated by city blocks) that you never lose track of what is going on. The shootout is the biggest, most exciting sequence that Michael Mann ever constructed.

‘Heat’s Bank Robbery Has Ties to Real-World Events

Heat‘s massive action sequence felt painfully prescient when, in 1997, the North Hollywood shootout occurred following a bank robbery in LA, and officers on the ground compared the encounter to Mann’s film. Only the perpetrators were killed in the North Hollywood shootout, but many others were injured in the hectic scene that turned the action-movie spectacle of Heat into a real-life nightmare.

While this 1997 shooting turned the Heat heist into a news headline, it was already loosely based off another fatal encounter between a detective and a crew of thieves. Heat was partially inspired by a professional thief who shares the same name as De Niro’s character, Neil McCauley. McCauley and Chicago detective Chuck Adamson, who Mann befriended and later worked with on the television series Miami Vice and Crime Story, saw their fates collide just as the film depicts the relationship between Hanna and McCauley. The two even met for coffee and built a respectful rapport as seen in Heat‘s iconic diner scene. In Steven Ryben‘s book, Michael Mann: Crime Auteur, Mann recalled the conversation that inspired Hanna and McCauley’s on-screen dynamic.

“Chuck was going through some crises in his life, and they wound up having one of those intimate conversations you sometimes have with strangers. There was a real rapport between them; yet both men verbally recognized one would probably kill the other.”

The mutual understanding between the two men proved true when Adamson shot and killed McCauley following a robbery and shootout in 1964. Heat resolves in the same way for the two main characters, but McCauley and Hanna are not the only ones whose lives are turned upside-down by the fallout of the bank robbery.

The Fallout of ‘Heat’s Biggest Action Sequence Impacts Every Character

Shiherlis is nearly fatally wounded during the heist, and with his cover blown, has to flee the country, abandoning his wife and child. Heat resolves with his future unclear. However, Mann and Meg Gardiner‘s 2022 novel, Heat 2, which is both a prequel and sequel, continues Shiherlis’ story with thrilling results. As for the rest of the ensemble, one powerful sequence that occurs as soon as the shootout ends ensures that the women of Heat are not forgotten, when we are shown Charlene Shiherlis (Ashley Judd), Elaine Cheritto (Susan Traylor), and Breedan’s partner, Lillian (Kim Staunton) reacting to the news reports about the shootout. Except for Charlene, these women have fairly limited screen-time throughout the film, but this brief moment forces the audience to reflect on their status as individuals whose lives have been thrown into the fray by this fatal event. The shootout claimed far more victims than the ones who died. Families have been broken apart, and these women are left to pick up the pieces.

After the shootout, the chess board that was meticulously set up over Heat‘s first two hours was cleared. Hanna zeros in on McCauley, and the rest of the movie’s runtime races toward their final, fateful encounter. There is no more time to reflect, as the slow building drama of the film’s earlier half is replaced with a frantic escape, which is either freedom or death for McCauley.

Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’ Set a New Standard for Epic Crime Movies

Heat certainly didn’t invent the crime epic, but it seems to have perfected it in the modern era. Mann told a story with such technical mastery that it is impossible to avoid comparisons when looking at subsequent heist films. Considering the women of Heat, who have an understated but powerful impact on the film, Steve McQueen‘s riveting film, Widows, seems to answer the question, “what if those women came together to finish the job that their husbands couldn’t?” The Town is Ben Affleck‘s response to Heat. Den of Thieves has been humorously dubbed (and we say this lovingly) “Heat for Dummies.” Even Christopher Nolan has spoken at length about how The Dark Knight was inspired by the structure of Mann’s film.

Mann was a master of the genre right from the beginning. Thief was a shot out of a cannon and is one of the greatest debut features of all time. Manhunter laid the groundwork for a cultural obsession with procedural detective stories. Mann’s late-period works have examined how surveillance, technology, and cyber-crime have created new tools to tell these classic crime stories, but Heat is his masterpiece. Heat took the crime story to its highest potential, with slick action direction and earnestly written characters who raised the bar for what this type of movie could accomplish in terms of thematic and narrative depth. Mann’s sprawling story of intertwining fate, crime, love, and death in Los Angeles is so finely tuned and so richly textured, that when you feel the heat around the corner, the last thing you’ll want to do is walk out of this movie.

Heat is available to watch on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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