Al Pacino, Robert De Niro,”Heat” (1995) Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. / The Hollywood Archive
If you are an Al Pacino and Robert De Niro Fan, this film restoration is ‘right up your alley.’ The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrates Michael Mann’s “Heat” on the big screen with a new 4K restoration screening on September 7 at 7 PM at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. And just for ‘icing on the cake,’ Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Michael Mann and other cast and crew will be there and participating in a conversation moderated by Christopher Nolan.
As a film fan, who can resist two titans of the cinema (practically Hollywood Royalty) going head to head on the silver screen albeit only briefly. The two stars spend less than 10 minutes of the entire 170-minute film in one another’s presence. But 4k AND they will be present at the screening as well? …mind-blowing to say the least.
Heat is the first movie to feature De Niro and Pacino onscreen, together, in the same scene. What an amazing treat for fans of both. And while they were also in “The Godfather: Part II,” they never appeared onscreen at the same time. Following Heat, De Niro and Pacino would go on to appear together in the 2008 film “Righteous Kill.” They are also scheduled to reunite in an upcoming Martin Scorsese film titled “The Irishman” (currently in development).
According to the Academy’s press release:
“The crew of a fierce, professional thief (De Niro) and an obsessively driven LAPD detective (Pacino) are locked in deadly opposition as they vector towards each other.
‘So superbly matched are Pacino and De Niro that the movie seems dual-powered. They’re a study in positive and negative charisma… The movie’s protagonists gaze into the mirror and see, gazing back, a stranger living on borrowed time. Heat is Mann’s ode to mortality… midlife crisis as last chance. Each character carries an abyss inside. In Mann’s twilight vision, Los Angeles isn’t a lush playground but a sprawling necropolis.’ (James Wolcott, Vanity Fair)
Taking inspiration from the late Chicago Police Detective Charlie Adamson – who killed Neil McCauley in a shootout in 1963 – Heat was the culmination of years of refinement by Mann. With its depth and range of characters, choreography of action, epic scale and dazzling use of Los Angeles, Heat is as incendiary as it was 20 years ago.”
For more information vist the Academy site