Isn't that the formula for a great anti-hero? The film's opening credits explain that a ronin is a "samurai whose liege was killed." These wayward warriors are thus forced to wander the land as "hired swords." "Ronin" is certainly saying something about a crumbling American empire whose soldiers have lost their purpose, but not their knightley sense of duty. Here are 15 films in that same spirit.Īnd that's what makes Sam worth rooting for. "Heat" is a completely convincing simulacrum of high-end crime, but one with painterly chiaroscuro style to spare. Absent too are irritating tech-related cliches: holograms, touch screens, the wacky hacker in a van doing a digital deus ex machina, and so on. A lot of the dialogue - particularly from Jon Voigt's fence - is barely even audible. There are no tedious expository characters. Al Pacino's jittery major crimes detective (who Pacino himself says he was playing as if high on cocaine) never utters a word of narration. Robert De Niro's bank robber never unfurls any silly schematics. It's the platonic ideal on which all other modern films about clever crews of crooks and the cops who chase them are based.īut "Heat" is also a mood, more than a neo-noir both aesthetically and tonally. "Heat" isn't just a heist movie - it's the heist movie. Mann has claimed to "reject realism," but it's that close attention to detail, merged with his overall expressionistic brilliance, that turned "Heat" into a genre of its own.
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