[drave]

Originally Posted by Destor Heat (1995) - 7/10 I think the thing the makes this work as well as it does is the theming. At a first glance we have a Gentleman Theif story and thats all well and good but the throughline is at its core dealing with a man's devotion to work and the sacrifices that are made for excellence. Each of the principle cast that get development, more on that point later, all have a female shadow that theyre trying to reconcile with. All hinging on their lack of devotion. The men all at one point or another chose their work over their women, who symbolically represent their personal life vs their work life. This inability to balance the two leads to disaster for all. The one thing i think the narrative needed was 1 character who had found a healthy balance or perhaps sacrificed work for personal so we could have explored what a better alternative could possibly look like...but perhaps that characters absence is a point unto itself. The opening action sequence stands out as the best shot sequence of the picture and its mostly due to the writting. A man goes to get a refill of coffee. While waiting a semi pulls the the curb. He abandons the coffee and hops into the semi. Cut to paramedics. Cut back the semi. After a short exchange the semi driver asks the former coffee enthusiast to stop talking. Tension between the two clearly hightened. Cut back to the paramedics.the dawn hockey masks. Cut back to the semi. They do the same. This short sequence is a really good example of how to establish a world and how a story reveals itself. We the audience enter the film knowing nothing. We dont know these people or what the stakes are. Each sequence is initially confusing, deliberately. Every step in this scene is on its face bizarre but we're learning second by second about the characters and their alignments in the world. Good men dont often wear hockey masks on a highway for example.if when they all wear them we know theyre a unit. The film has a host of flaws though. Two bothered me more than others. First its Al Pacino. He shouldnt be in this film. Now obviously this film exists to specifically pit Pacino against DeNiro. Not the characters but the actors. Thats the draw in 95. But nothing in the script is for Pacino. The character feels black more than anything and its a terrible case misscasting. The character is overly physical for an actor who isnt physically imposing and the dialog feels completely inorganic safe the diner scene with he and DeNiro where Pacino is finally not portraying a spastic black man in white face. And the performance he gives doesnt justify the casting either. Its 3 hours of melodramatic overacting that would only be toleratable if one or both of us were incredibly stoned. If it were him it would calm him down and it if were me atleast i could laugh. The other major issue is its a 3 hour pitcure, which is fine, that has about 15 principle characters, which is fine, but only 2-4 get any substantial screen time, which is not fine. Danny Trajo is a core member of the primary 4 robbers. Hes in about 7 or so scenes, speaks in maybe 3 of them, and gets about 5 words in each. The getaway driver is another. He gets 3 scenes. Hes fully tied into the theming inside these 3 scenes shown to be freshly out. Trying to stay clean for his woman only to choose the life (i.e. work) over her and fies for his choice. But it is im giving him this full back story contained in very small scenes that makes it all the more odd. In a 3 hour film a total of maybe 5 min is all the time we have for this subplot? And all the cast suffers from this. Kilmer especially. For a film this long to have such little time is a paradox i cant grasp. I imagine there's an entire reel worth of material that didnt make it. The theming is incredibly strong though and makes its message very clear. All in all i think its pretty good.

But WHERE'S THE FUCKING VAN?!!?