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OT: Movies/TV Shows

Im obsessed with Westerns (film & novels) so am ashamed to admit I’ve never seen Shane….will have to get that atop the queue and then rewatch Logan.
heh, Palance is always good at playing the heavy.

Well, there's only so much he can do in one of the earliest of the 'Sword & Sorcery' movies of the 80s (it's almost so bad it's good heh):

 
The other thing Heat had, was an unreal ensemble cast of characters killing it in virtually every other role…..

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Gage, Haysbert, Berkeley, Studi, Fichtner, Tone Loc, Nonna, Levine, Sizemore, Kilmer, Trejo, Judd, (Voight was meh, moustache with that hair looked absurd)…..woman cast as Pacino‘s wife was kinda awesome in that role too. Different than your usual wife in flicks like these.
See, besides Pacino & de Niro, I thought everyone else did great. No complaints about any of 'em. Would be twice (probably more than twice, honestly) as good if it wasn't lead by de Niro & Pacino. Especially Pacino. I don't mind de Niro's acting, but beyond the facial hair, his character in this movie this movie seems identical to his character in Casino. I haven't watched Casino in years, so I might be misremembering it a little, but purely out of memory, the character was identical. If it was, like zeke said, de Niro being de Niro? Shrug, doesn't really interest me.

If they had removed Al Pacino and replaced him with Val Kilmer? That, in of itself, makes the movie top-tier. Pacino seemed to be entirely out of place in every single one of the scenes he's in and the people around him can't be bothered to even look at him sideways. His character would have been better suited in a MadTV sketch by how he portrayed it.

Anywho, not a bad movie at all, but yeah.
 
Bill Simmons on The Rewatchables definitely acts like it's the greatest movie ever...(think it's the first movie they reviewed twice, and they may have even done it a third time.)

I don't mind de Niro's acting, but beyond the facial hair, his character in this movie this movie seems identical to his character in Casino. I haven't watched Casino in years, so I might be misremembering it a little, but purely out of memory, the character was identical. If it was, like zeke said, de Niro being de Niro? Shrug, doesn't really interest me.

I love him in it as I'm a big fan of 'Richard Stark's The Parker' series, and I ever since I heard Tarantino say that DeNiro in Heat is the closest thing we ever got to the novel's version of Parker.....despite Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, Jim Brown, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham, all playing iterations of him on screen.


....I think there's also a patheticness to his character in Casino, that doesn't exist in either Heat or Goodfellas.
 
yeah I agree…..De Niro still killed it, but Pacino was already doing a bit of a parody of himself at this point….could have cast that role with someone who plays it a bit more straight, and it’d have made for a better film.

To rip off zeke’s SW comment tho…..Heat is all about the sound design of those shootouts in the streets. That blew the doors off any shootout we’d ever seen before (or since?).
I think the fact the original script had his character doing coke, and they film a scene with it then didn't have it in the final film explains it a it. But he's one of the weaknesses in it if anything.
Tom Sizemore is fantastic in it.
 
....and while looking up all the names who played a version of Parker on screen.....learned that Shane Black is putting together a Parker universe with both films & shows for Amazon studios. Robert Downey Jr would be playing Parker in them.
 
One underrated scene is the airport one at the end. That's something they can't better nowadays. It's tougher to film movies at real airports now due to security.
To Live & Die in LA also has a cool chase in an airport
 
Part of the appeal (or not) was Pacino and DeNiro facing off as Pacino and DeNiro as two super actors of their time. The audience never forgets they are watching these greats in a long awaited Hollywood Acting Universe… something that may be lost to someone watching the film right now for the very first time
 
Part of the appeal (or not) was Pacino and DeNiro facing off as Pacino and DeNiro as two super actors of their time. The audience never forgets they are watching these greats in a long awaited Hollywood Acting Universe… something that may be lost to someone watching the film right now for the very first time
And then they went and did Righteous Kill
 
the more i think about the more i realize i might actually hate that movie. will have to rewatch to confirm.

- characters were all not just unlikeable but mostly pathetically unredeeming
- Bobby and Al were trying way too hard to Act and both turned in really poor performance, for opposite reasons.
- villain was a cartoon super evil baddie
- mann's directing goes for super cool but comes out more like just plain cold most of the time
- music ties right in with that

on the good side:

- his directing is still technically pretty great and he can shoot some very cool sequences. the shootout is legit great.
- a lot of memorably excellent acting from the supporting cast. kevin gage even does something interesting with that cartoon baddie.


but i will give it a rewatch. it's been a while. maybe i had too high expectations going in.
 
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