Taglines: An L.A. Redemption.
Heat movie storyline. Hunters and their prey–Neil and his professional criminal crew hunt to score big money targets (banks, vaults, armored cars) and are, in turn, hunted by Lt. Vincent Hanna and his team of cops in the Robbery/Homicide police division. A botched job puts Hanna onto their trail while they regroup and try to put together one last big ‘retirement’ score.
Neil and Vincent are similar in many ways, including their troubled personal lives. At a crucial moment in his life, Neil disobeys the dictum taught to him long ago by his criminal mentor–‘Never have anything in your life that you can’t walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner’–as he falls in love. Thus the stage is set for the suspenseful ending…
Heat is a 1995 American crime film written, produced and directed by Michael Mann, and starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Val Kilmer. De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a professional thief, while Pacino plays Lt. Vincent Hanna, a LAPD robbery-homicide detective tracking down McCauley’s crew. The story is based on the former Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson’s pursuit during the 1960s of a criminal named McCauley, after whom De Niro’s character is named. Heat is a remake by Mann of a TV series he had worked on, the pilot of which was released as a TV movie, L.A. Takedown in 1989.
About the Production
Heat is based on the true story of a real Neil McCauley, a calculating criminal and ex-Alcatraz inmate who was tracked down by Detective Chuck Adamson in 1964. Neil McCauley was raised in Wisconsin where his father worked as steam fitter to provide his family with a middle-class life.
The normalcy of Neil’s youth faded following the adoption of another child and his father’s death in 1928. At 14, he quit school to find work to support his mother and five siblings. The McCauleys soon relocated to Chicago. In Chicago, McCauley began his criminal career after his mother began drinking heavily. By the time he was 20, he had already done three stints in county jail for larceny.
In 1961, McCauley was transferred from Alcatraz to McNeil, as mentioned in the film, and he was released in 1962. Upon his release, he immediately began planning new heists. With ex-cons Michael Parille and William Pinkerton they used bolt cutters and drills to burglarize a manufacturing company of diamond drill bits, a scene which is closely recreated in the film.
Detective Chuck Adamson, upon whom Al Pacino’s character is largely based, began keeping tabs on McCauley’s crew around this time, knowing that he had become active again. The two even met for coffee once, just as portrayed in the film. Their dialogue in the script was almost exactly word for word the conversation that McCauley and Adamson had. The next time the two would meet, guns would be drawn, just as the movie portrays.
On March 25, 1964, McCauley and members of his regular crew followed an armored car that delivered money to a Chicago grocery store. Once the drop was made, three of the robbers entered the store. They threatened the clerks and stole money bags worth $10,000 before they sped off amid a hail of police gunfire.
McCauley’s crew was unaware that Adamson and eight other detectives had blocked off all potential exits, and when the getaway car turned down an alley and the bandits saw the blockade, they realized they were trapped. All four suspects exited the vehicle and began firing.
Two of his crew, men named Breaden and Parille, were slain in an alley while a third man, Polesti (on whom Chris Shiherlis is very loosely based), shot his way out and escaped. McCauley was shot to death on the lawn of a nearby home. He was 50 years old and the prime suspect in several burglaries. Polesti was caught days later and sent to prison. As of 2011 Polesti was still alive.
Adamson went on to a successful career as a television and film producer, and died in 2008 at age 71. Michael Mann’s 2009 film Public Enemies stated in its end credits “In memory of Chuck Adamson”. As an additional inspiration for Hanna, in an 1995 interview Mann cited an unnamed man working internationally against drug cartels. Additionally, the character of Nate, played by Jon Voight, is closely based on real-life former career criminal and fence turned writer Edward Bunker, who served as a consultant to Mann on the film.
Heat (1995)
Directed by: Michael Mann
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Ted Levine, Jon Voight, Val Kilmer
Screenplay by: Michael Mann
Production Design by: Neil Spisak
Cinematography by: Dante Spinotti
Film Editing by: Dov Hoenig, Pasquale Buba William Goldenberg, Tom Rolf
Costume Design by: Deborah Lynn Scott
Set Decoration by: Anne H. Ahrens
Art Direction by: Margie Stone McShirley
Music by: Elliot Goldenthal
MPAA Rating: R for violence and language.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: December 15, 1995
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