Robert De Niro names his “favourite” scene in ‘Heat’: “It’s a great piece of literature”
Putting two of the best actors in history together in the same movie is far from being a guarantee of excellence, as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino discovered when they were both cast in a crime thriller that used their involvement as one of its primary marketing tactics.
The end results were nothing short of diabolical, with critics sharpening their knives to cleave the film apart at the seams and slam the two titans of Hollywood for wasting both their talents and reputations on a drab, dull, and simplistic story that trades in themes of conscience, loyalty, honour, and corruption.
Anyway, that’s enough about Jon Avnet’s dismal Righteous Kill because it doesn’t even deserve to be named in the same breath as Michael Mann’s Heat. As mentioned, teaming up two heavyweights doesn’t mean a slugfest is inevitably on the cards. It’s not that lightning was remotely in danger of striking twice when the first teaming of De Niro and Pacino instantly became so iconic.
Mann was smart and self-aware enough to know that because there was so much buzz swirling around the project based entirely on seeing The Godfather veterans go toe-to-toe, it had to be worth the wait when they finally stared each other in the face. Fortunately, Heat is one of modern cinema’s greatest cops-and-criminals stories, so it’s not as if the audience were twiddling their thumbs waiting for it to happen. When it did, though, the fireworks were understatedly exceptional.
It’s literally just two guys shooting the shit, but thanks to the meticulously-worded exchange, Mann’s simple camerawork, and the two stars knowing they’re carrying the baggage of their personas as well as their characters, it was already destined to be known as the film’s signature scene long before it even released.
Not that either of them were showing the pressure that comes with giving cinephiles the world over a showdown they’ve always dreamed of, with De Niro’s Neil McCauley and Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna engaging each other with a naturalistic, admirative sense of mutual appreciation for the other’s work, even though they exist on the opposite side of the legal divide.
Understandably, then, De Niro called it “my favourite scene in the movie” during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, but that wasn’t an opinion that came after the fact. Instead, the two-time Academy Award winner knew from the very first time reading the script that something special was on the cards.
“My favourite scene that was written before, not because we were doing it, but the favourite scene written in the movie,” he clarified before offering an apt summation as to why. “It’s a great piece of literature.” De Niro was won over by the writing long before he sat opposite Pacino on set, and it can’t be said the powerhouse pair didn’t deliver in that regard, either.
