Not having seen this since its first release 25 years ago, I re-watch this 4K restoration with some trepidation, wondering if it’ll hold up to how I remember it. Thankfully, for the most part, it did. Remaking his own TV movie with then acting gods Al Pacino and Robert De Niro sharing the screen for the first time, Michael Mann doesn’t disappoint with this 171min sprawling epic, pitting Pacino’s Vincent Hanna, an almost stereotypically resolute police detective who excels at work but a mess in his personal life, against De Niro’s Neil McCauley, the ruthless but gentlemanly criminal mastermind who heads a gang of vicious bank robbers. A slickly executed heist on an armoured vehicle opens the film and sets the tone but it’s its dense plotting, with 4-5 storylines criss-crossing each other that’s most impressively handled. Even though parts of it would be deemed superfluous nowadays (I’m looking at you, Waingro, and your serial killing tendencies) and most female characters here are sketchily drawn as girlfriends and wives (it’s the 90s, after all), the cat-and-mouse gameplay between the crews and between Hanna and McCauley is deliciously and meticulously plotted, as they’re poignantly portrayed as two sides mirroring each other in more ways than one. Mann’s sumptuous and stylishly composed film pops, especially at night when he’s let loose under Los Angeles’ mesmerizing city of lights, as he ratchets up tension, building to that famous scene at the cafe where two actors at their zenith finally come face to face and it’s as magnificent and unforgettable as you’d expect. Though I must confess, that scene aside, Pacino’s penchant for shouting his lines in his signature bugged-eyed exaggerated manner, already starts to grate; leaving a small blemish on a classic of its genre that has otherwise stood the test of time.
@SubtitledFriend 