Something to watch tonight: Monday 14 August

Heat (Mann, 1995) is streaming on Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+

Funerals & Snakes read­er (and reg­u­lar house­guest of ours) JL of Freeman’s Bay coined the phrase “Hollywood at Home” for our reg­u­lar Saturday night home video exper­i­ence. This is where all the room lights are extin­guished and tol­er­ance for second screens is reduced to zero. (We do pause for occa­sion­al bath­room or refresh­ment breaks so it’s not a com­plete recre­ation of the the­at­ric­al experience.)

Last Saturday I bus­ted out the 4K UHD “Director’s Definitive Edition” of Michael Mann’s Heat, not released loc­ally but when Am*z*n offers you a US$8.99 spe­cial you jump on it.

I hadn’t seen the film since the old days of VHS – at two hours and fifty minutes it came on two tapes – and am pleased to say that it really holds up. As it should.

Based on the true story of a ded­ic­ated cop hunt­ing an equally ded­ic­ated thief, it plays like an old Western. Two old guns (De Niro and Pacino), each with their code, out of step with the world, destined to come to grief.

While the action set-pieces are jus­ti­fi­ably remembered, it is the human touches across the entire cast that give the film its weight – every­one has a back story, every­one has rela­tion­ships that they put in jeop­ardy, every­one is vividly drawn and played.

I was par­tic­u­larly taken this time around by the scars around Val Kilmer’s eyes. The char­ac­ter of Chris is one of the most touch­ing and his lack of impulse con­trol and gambling addic­tion could be the res­ult of the head injury that gave him those scars. His out­come is dif­fer­ent to the oth­ers and def­in­itely more poignant.

Lots of great films are not avail­able on any loc­al stream­ing ser­vice, as I’m sure you are well aware, but for some reas­on Heat is on three at the same time. I haven’t checked to see wheth­er they all use the new Mann-approved col­our tim­ing from the UHD but I’m sure they will all be an improve­ment on those old VHS tapes.

If you are in pos­ses­sion of a UHD play­er, I should let you know that Heat is still avail­able from Am*z*n for only US$7.99 and UHD discs have no region cod­ing. Like tak­ing candy from a baby.