Heat

Directed by Michael Mann, this crime thriller about a cop (Al Pacino) and a robber (Robert De Niro) is epic in both scale and length, clocking in at just under three hours. Though punctuated by bursts of virtuoso action, including a running battle in downtown LA that ranks as one of the best action scenes ever filmed, it is the unusual emphasis on character that impresses most. De Niro is in fine form as the calm, methodical loner whose life is arranged so that he can abandon everything in 30 seconds when the heat is on, including his sidekick, Val Kilmer. Pacino, by contrast, is more of a clich?, angst-ridden and on his third marriage. We've seen it before and catch Pacino acting all the time, especially in his set-piece meeting with De Niro. It's also a pity that after so much brilliance Mann should succumb to a derivative ending — an airport chase, à la The Killing and Bullitt, and a tidy if bloody resolution in which the wrong man gets killed.

A highly polished, lovingly crafted thriller, but overlong, portentous and padded with irrelevant subplots, and one that finally gives birth to a mouse of an idea: that cops and robbers are much alike. Its true subject-matter is no more than male bonding