Heat

          Heat.  Heat, Heat, Heat, Heat…  Believe it or not, folks, this movie is the reason the Man Movie Guide exists.  This movie is the quintessential example of what we mean by a Man Movie.  If you survey everyone you know that has seen Heat, a vast majority of people will tell you it was a good movie.  However, if you speak to the men that have seen it, they are likely to get a certain twinkle in their eye.  This movie touches a male nerve that most people won’t be able to explain away.  Interpreting the movie through our primer on what constitutes a Man Movie, it becomes somewhat clearer what separates this movie from countless other good heist movies.  This movie features heavy amounts of violence, manly archetypes of various stripes (on both sides of the law), loyalty, betrayal, brotherhood, honor, epic shootouts, and bank heists.

CORRECTION: Heists with cool fucking hockey masks!

          Al Pacino plays a cop who buries his emotions in his work.  His personal life collapses around him as he focuses on doing what he does, and shielding his family from the details.  His single-mindedness is pointed out in dialogue with other people and how he responds to his wife’s accusations.  Perhaps a better gauge, however, is his dialogue throughout the movie.  One of the most bizarre things about this film is that it seems as though Pacino’s Lieutenant Hanna never has a conversation with anyone but himself.  His answers to questions are nearly complete non-sequiturs, his anger is often unprovoked, his eye contact is all over the place.  At times this is unnerving and almost helps the character who seems to border on the autism spectrum, but at others it leaves us with really funny lines like, “You can get killed walking your doggie!”  Just imagine the trademark Pacino yell-y voice saying that.  The only conversation he seems to be engaged in takes place at a coffee shop across the table from his nemesis, Robert De Niro.  Whether this is intentional or not is undetermined, but it does add a gravitas to the scene beyond the mob movie fanboy ejaculation, “They’re finally in the same room together in the same movie!” that was likely a big selling point to the whole shebang.

Sometimes it feels like the only thing separating Pacino from Gary Busey is The Godfather.

          Robert De Niro plays the head of a heist crew.  His character has at least a partial resemblance to James Coburn’s character in The Magnificent Seven.  The money almost seems secondary to both the challenge and the craft to De Niro’s Neal McCauley.  As with many, many heist movies, this one focuses on the concept of ‘one last big score’.  But don’t let that deter you from the film.  If anything, it just helps to amplify the underlying philosophical premise of the movie.  You see, this film is about as fatalistic and deterministic as it gets.  Characters are constantly and repeatedly going against their own decisions, not to mention against good advice or the smart move.  Each character seems as though they’re traveling on rails towards the endgame, and what makes this movie both wonderful and tragic, is that those rails all inevitably collide in a pleasantly unpleasant way.  Thieves have to steal, cops must fight crime, psychopaths are compelled to kill, criminals are unable to leave their life behind, witnesses can’t not testify despite the implications, and relationships live on in the brutal light of infidelity and incompatibility.  Case in point, during the pivotal shared coffee between Hanna and McCauley, the following exchange happens:

                     HANNA

          I don't know how to do anything

          else.

                      NEIL

         (the shared confession)  ...neither do I.

                      HANNA

          And I don't much want to.

                      NEIL

          Neither do I.

          If you have seen this movie, and it’s been a while, you’re likely forgetting what an unbelievably ridiculous cast was involved.  Granted, not everyone was well known at the time, but De Niro’s gang also includes Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Danny Trejo.  Jon Voight is their awesomely disgusting mulleted fence and advisor.  Pacino investigates flanked by Ted “It rubs the lotion on its skin” Levine.   Natalie Portman is Pacino’s stepdaughter Ashley Judd plays Val Kilmer’s wife.  The movie also features Dennis Haysbert, Hank Azaria, Jeremy Piven, Tone Loc, and Henry Rollins.  It can be distracting, but only momentarily.

          The movie, though it belongs on the Man Movie Mount Rushmore, is far from perfect.  The non-orchestral music is particularly bad.  Much of the time the music has a seedy mid-90s aspect not unlike an episode of Red Shoe Diaries, and a scene in a hip, urban underground club features House of Pain (unlikely even in 1995).  The dialog between Waingro and his prostitute sounds like it was written by Michael Mann while he was trying to watch something on TV at the same time.  If you think we’re making a big deal about nothing, she at one point says this to Waingro, “You fly. You cool.”  Nobody says that ever.  Not ever.  She goes on to say, and we quote, “You a hot dog.  You a cowboy.  You hung like a horse and this was the monster fuck of my young life.  Now I gotta get my ass streetside.”  Really, Michael Mann?!  Really?  It also warrants mentioning that the lighting in certain scenes is completely fake to the point that it looks like actors are in front of a green screen for something as mundane as being on a balcony overlooking the city.  We’re not sure who was in charge of this, but lighting is a craft that was honed to a point so as to be innocuous in ordinary scenes in non-expressionist/surrealist films decades before Heat came out.  There are no less than three scenes that throw all conventional lighting knowledge out the window.

Unless Mac Tonight is standing right behind you, this is not how night looks.

          Flaws and all, this movie is an essential.  The first heist holds up just as intense and indispensable as when it first came out nearly 20 years ago.  The acting and the script (with the one noted exception) is phenomenal.  The movie is thrilling and suspenseful and gut-wrenching.  It also manages to accomplish what so few movies do; it humanizes both sides.  Some people grew up wanting to be the good guys, others grew up thinking being a bank robber would be awesome… but it’s safe to say that the movie makes you understand the allure and the grief of both.

Heat Trailer

Goodfellas

by Danny

     You know the type of movie that just makes you feel good? Toy Story and The Sandlot come to mind. What about the type that takes you back to a simpler time, like Forrest Gump or Apollo 13? And don't you love movies like The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty, the type that make you realize that despite all the cruelty and injustice, the world is truly a beautiful place? The 1990's were full of these movies. Goodfellas ain't one of them.

     From the opening credits to the closing scene, there is neither a warm nor a fuzzy feeling to be had. It's a movie about life in the mafia as seen through the eyes of someone who lived it, and it doesn't pull any punches. For an organization centered around respect, these guys don't bat an eye when it comes to stealing, abusing their women, and stabbing each other in the neck with whatever writing implement happens to be at hand. Come to think of it, an eye is pretty much the only thing they don't bat. Even the most admirable of the movie's protagonists have their best friends whacked (they just don't do it themselves). Greedy and underhanded at their best, diabolical at their worst, at the core of it they're immoral opportunists in a city full of opportunity. The movie's title is truly ironic, as these fellas are anything but good.

     It's also a veritable Who's Who of mafia actors in film and television. Pick a name from The Sopranos, or Casino, or a Bronx Tale, and chances are pretty good that they were in Goodfellas. If they weren't, it's a safe assumption that they got whacked before the opening credits. Ray Liotta plays the film's central wiseguy, Henry Hill, a man who is literally raised by the mob in 1960's New York, along with his best friend, the stocky powder keg Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci, appropriately). Under the tutelage of the steet-wise Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), Henry works his way up through the ranks. The journey takes him from small-time hijacking to a multi-million dollar airline heist; in the process, we see the highs and lows in the life of a blue-collar gangster driven only by greed, impulse, and cocaine-fueled paranoia.

     Director Martin Scorcese and writers Scorcese and Nicholas Pileggi (author of "Wise Guys", the book upon which the film is based) have created a raw and unrelenting cinematic landscape, which is not without its share of spectacle-- if skin could literally crawl, there are scenes in Goodfellas that would cause it to. Did I mention that a guy gets stabbed in the neck? I was mistaken. Two guys get stabbed in the neck. I could drone on about the violence in Goodfellas, but the IMDB Parents Guide has already done a fine job (on a 1-10 scale, Goodfellas scored a perfect 10). I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you plan on screening Goodfellas for your 2nd grade class (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/parentalguide). Some excerpts:

- A man is shot in the back of the head; blood splatters all over the room he was in and he flops to the ground. He is then shot three more times and his body is seen with bloody bullet holes and blood leaking out of them.

- A man repeatedly pistol whips another man and the man's nose practically breaks off.

- A dead man is shown hanging by his neck on a meat hook in a refrigerated meat locker in the back of an 18-wheeler.

     Violence aside, Goodfellas really is a pleasure to watch. It belongs alongside the likes of The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, and Clockwork Orange-- grotesque at times, but nuanced and complex. Scorcese and Pileggi's screenplay gives dimension to characters that could have fallen flat in less capable hands. Liotta, Pesci, and De Niro are in top form. Lorraine Bracco plays Hill's wife, Karen, who tries to remain simultaneously ignorant of, and complicit with, his activities. Paul Sorvino is eerily convincing as a Godfather-type. Also, watch for Michael Imperioli as the unfortunate Spider... and Martin Scorcese's own mother, Catherine Scorcese, as Tommy's mother.

     Do yourself a favor-- cook up some pasta, grill a few steaks, open a bottle of red wine and watch Goodfellas. Indulge your fascination with organized crime. Satisfy your gratuitous violence sweet tooth. Enjoy a great film by one of America's top filmmakers. And while you're at it, get your shinebox.

Goodfellas Trailer