It seems unfathomable today. Incomprehensible. A head-scratcher for the ages. Yet the truth remains that, released in 1995, Heat, the pulsating, epic-length, labyrinthine crime thriller written and directed by Michael Mann, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, and Natalie Portman, didn’t receive a single Academy Award nomination from those antiquarians, not even a technical pity nom. Film-critics associations were almost equally obtuse, overly besotted with the maudlin likes of Leaving Las Vegas and its empty liquor bottles.
But Michael Mann has enjoyed the last laugh, assuming he does laugh, levity not being one of his cardinal traits. Far from receding into the video landfill of history, the status and mystique of Heat has grown, deepened, attaining an eternal neon aura that haunts the hazy Hollywood sky. Its most memorable scenes, images, comebacks, and dirtbag characters (Kevin Gage’s Waingro) have become permanent fixtures of film lexicon and Film Twitter parlance, its influence muscling across the screen in The Dark Knight, The Town, and Den of Thieves.
