Readers of a certain age will remember the sheer nuclear impact of Michael Mann’s Heat on its release in 1995. Not only was it formally ambitious and wildly influential, but it also represented the first time that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro had ever shared a screen.
This, more than anything, was the film’s big draw. Two men, each justifiably thought of as the greatest actor to ever work in the medium, bristling against each other in real time. Their scene together in the diner was billed as the greatest spectacle in cinema since King Kong climbed the Empire State Building. Pacino v De Niro was Fischer v Spassky. It was Einstein v Bohr. It was Foreman v Ali. There was genuinely no way to overstate how momentous the pairing was.
