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A fan asked me to discuss Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat as part of my ongoing series of essays on mafia movies. I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Heat is not really a mafia movie. The good news is that Heat is such a magnificent movie that I am reviewing it anyway.
Heat is a crime movie, indeed an organized crime movie. But it is not a mafia movie, although the trailers and posters make it look like one, because it stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, both of whom have had leading roles in major mafia movies. But the criminals in Heat do not belong to Italian, Irish, or Jewish organized crime “families.”
Beyond that, the classics of the mafia genre are set within the world of the mafia. Both the protagonists (the “heroes” or at least anti-heroes) and the antagonists (“the villains”) are all criminals. The police, of course, hover in the background and are also antagonists, sometimes aligned with criminals.
But when the police move into the foreground as the protagonists, we have what can be called a police drama as opposed to a crime drama. Mafia movies involving undercover police agents like The Departed or Donnie Brasco are something of a hybrid of the police and the crime genres.
Conflict gives life to stories. In the hands of a good director, the more conflict, the better. Clashing worlds (cops vs. criminals) and conflicts within these worlds (double crosses, undercover agents, double agents, hoe drama), can be quite intellectually and emotionally involving. Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is a masterpiece of this hybrid genre. But the greatest example is Heat.
