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But theres something else about it that has always fascinated me.
As some fans already know, Mann had filmed the story ofHeatonce before as a 1989 TV movie calledL.A.
Takedown, which was originally meant as a pilot for an NBC show.
L.A. Takedownis certainly noHeat to put it mildly.
But its not trying to be.
Plank and McArthur dutifully run their lines and bring a certain amount of prefab intensity to their parts.
I used to hate the performances inL.A.
Takedown, but over the years, Ive grown a weird fondness for them.
Takedownremains a strange experience.
Like a transmission from an alternate reality.
Much of the dialogue is the same.
Despite their surface similarities, the two scenes make for a startling contrast.
Put them side by side and youll see how magnificently everything comes to life inHeat.
We often talk about characters having inner lives.
Its not enough just to look great, read your lines well, or give good reaction shots.
We need to be able to simplywatchyou.
Takedown, as inHeat, this is the first time the two men come face to face.
By playing up the iconography, Mann gives the scene an almost metaphysical edge.
That is no mere marketing gimmick.
It is what the characters themselves are doing in the scene.
Pacino, however, brings to his slouch an almost pleading quality; he makes Hanna vulnerable and open.
This is partly to disarm McCauley, to get as much as he can out of him.
Their eyes keep drifting around but always end up locking onto the others.
Hanna blurts out his emotions: My lifes a disaster zone …
I got a wife.
(Listen to the way Pacino changes the rhythm of his delivery halfway through this sentence.
Nothing is predictable.)
(I have a woman.)
McCauley, still impossibly tense, simply says this about his dream: I have one where Im drowning.
And I gotta wake myself up and start breathing or Ill die in my sleep.
He says the dream is about time, but its also clearly about constantly being on the run.
This, too, has greater resonance in the film.
This scene is, in many ways, Neil McCauleys undoing.
And yet,heres the heat.
The smart thing would have been to use the restroom, then disappear forever.
But no, McCauley sits there and tells Hanna about his dreams.
And yet he does, because this man, he realizes, understands him.
Neither would have it any other way.
They need each other.
This, then, is what it means when a character has an inner life.
But thats also true of the scene inL.A.
Takedown which has a fraction of the impact that it has inHeat.
