[The News Bot]

Reviewed by Cas Harlow, 16th November 2009
Heat is in my top 3 films and has been for nearly fifteen years now. It is an exercise in perfection, a multi-faceted crime epic that succeeds in bringing together two of the greatest actors of all-time in what is surely a clash of acting titans, and giving us a beautiful character study, quality scripting, superior direction, memorable action sequences and thrills throughout its 3 hour runtime. Immensely quotable, with arguably Oscar-worthy performances from an ensemble cast of familiar faces, Heat finally makes it to Blu-ray with a perfectly decent but unexceptional US Region Free release. Video and Audio are very good, arguably the best we have seen or heard from this movie, and the Extras at least included everything from the previous Special Edition SD-DVD even if they do not offer us anything more. All the fuss over Mann’s new cut, and – frankly – it is barely noticeable. It is a shame that he didn’t leave well alone, however, as the movie was perfect already. Still, it’s nonetheless an all-time classic, and deserves to be in every movie-lover’s collection.

“There is a flip side to that coin. What if you do got me boxed in and I gotta put you down? Cause no matter what, you will not get in my way. We've been face to face, yeah. But I will not hesitate. Not for a second.”
Read the full review...

[Pecker]

A great review, of a great Blu-ray Disc release, of a superb film.

Kudos to Cas for once again holding up the high standards of the AVF review team.

Just one small point, Cas.

RE:

Who can forget DeNiro’s opening salvo during the Eighties, tour-de-force performances in the likes of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter?

Mean Streets was 1973, Taxi Driver was 1976, The Deer Hunter was 1978, and Raging Bull was the only one of those films from the '80's, just scraping in the first year of the decade.



Having said that his '80's output wasn't half bad, including, among others, The King of Comedy, Once Upon a Time in America, Brazil, The Mission, Angel Heart, The Untouchables, and We're No Angels *.

Steve W

* Okay, maybe we'll forget We're No Angels.

SW

[domtheone]

Originally Posted by Pecker

* Okay, maybe we'll forget We're No Angels.

Substitute We're No Angels with Midnight Run. His greatest comedy turn

Nice Review

[inzaman]

Nice review and also one of my favourite films, needless to say i already have the BD prior to reading this review, but it was a good read

[bosque]

Very good review of a terrific film. With such a tense movie it's easy to forget how funny Pacino is in it and the scene where he is goading Ashley Judd's slime-ball boyfriend is a corker ("She's got a great ass!"). As Cas says in his review, the line that's dropped ("Ferocious, aren't I ?!" at 118mins. 36 secs) should probably have been left in. It's very easy to miss (and I imagine to cut) because it's said while the camera is swinging around a character's back and you'd have to know the movie frame-by-frame to be aware of it (so, well spotted Cas !!). Mann can't seem to leave his films alone, forever tinkering with them.

[casharlow]

Thanks for all your comments.

Yeah it wasn't easy to spot any changes made. Unfortunately I don't have the facilities to watch the dvd and blu-ray side-by-side so it was just lucky noticing the couple of changes I did.

There were other things I thought were different (like Kilmer turning on the radio whilst waiting to take down the armoured car, and then turning it off again cause there's just nonsense on) but on checking with the DVD version I realised that I just hadn't noticed them before.

I have no idea why Mann would have opted to make these tiny changes, and laughed out loud when they removed the 'detritus' line because I was waiting for Pacino's wife to say it. It is such an odd thing to come out of a character's wife's mouth during an argument about their marriage!