''Heat'': Why it's a great heist movie
THE SETUP After an armored-car robbery goes wrong, professional thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and his longtime crew of career criminals plan a daring robbery that will set each of them up for the rest of their lives. All you really need to know about McCauley is that he is a brooding perfectionist who believes in not getting attached to ''anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat.''
THE JOB A large and busy bank in downtown Los Angeles. Guns — lots and lots of 'em — will be fired in one of the greatest (and loudest) shootouts in film history.
THE CATCH Neil's crew is being followed by Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino, pictured), a weary but determined detective who works in the Robbery-Homicide division of the LAPD. He and Macauley will sit face to face in one of the greatest coffee meetings in film history.
DOES CRIME PAY? Yes... and no. Director Michael Mann's sleek and brutal crime drama also functions as a character study of two obsessive individuals — so expect moral ambiguities.
EW GRADE B- (Read the review)
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