Cops and Robbers

I watched Heat again, twice in two weeks, and continue to be blown away by how good it is.

I yelled at a guy the other day for calling The Godfather a "serious study of the lives of gangsters." It certainly is... in a world where lawlessness and vice dollars have no effect on the people who benefit from them. I really hated The Sopranos, but at least there you saw the availability of drugs and women, and commonplace violence, rubbing off on the characters who benefit from them.

Heat centers on a really tight crew, who keep their shit together, keep tabs on one anothers' bad habits, and are at the top of their game. And yet, crime takes its toll. And the cops who are hunting them are equally badass, and dedicated, and that takes a toll too. And above all the brilliant crime drama of cops and robbers, you get a story about how these badasses seek and relate to normal human relationships... all of which are, inevitably fucked up, but remain very human and interesting. Is there better crime drama, in movie form and outside the noir drama (though, this is debatable).

Is there a better Cops and Robbers movie?

I can't think of one. Soliciting suggestions.

Something else that caught my attention... the bad guys are using assault rifles, firing 5.56 and 7.62mm. Those rounds will shred body armor, and the 7.62 can trash a vehicle real good, too. Cop body armor is basically worthless against these slugs. In the first hit, they leave a couple of these rounds in a couple of bodies, so it is definitely sitting in the cops' minds that, if they try to arrest the bad guys, they are going to come under serious and *very* potentially lethal gunfire. The cops don't mention it, though, and don't belabor the point for the rubes in the audience. (Maybe they just didn't have to, as the climax very much recalls the North Hollywood Shootout of 1997--wait, no it didn't, because Heat came out in 1995. It also adds to my wtf factor that the cops had assault rifles so handy--though it wouldn't if dialog established that the Robbery-Homicide guys had made preparations to take on storm trooper bank robbers.)

I can't decide if that is inspired or not, but it certainly adds to the flavor. Everyone on all sides is a badass who knows the stakes and doesn't need to dwell on it. It is a Michael Mann flare, as far as I can tell, and it feels good. Of course, I could be talking out of my ass on weapons caliber and shit.

Either way, seeing Al Pacino man-handle Henry Rollins is a beautiful thing. I am reminded of one of my favorite scenes in television in all time, and one of the best in NYPD Blue, where Andy is sitting with his son, recently recruited into the cops, telling him how to do the job. They are talking about how to move some guys off a corner (one cop, three thugs), and they don't want to go. "Then you use your night stick, show them what you learned at the academy. As a cop, you don't lose a fight. You lose a fight, you lose your life."