Heat's 25 years old today so watch it and watch out for VAL KILMER'S HIDEOUSLY SWOLLEN ELBOW - it's like a beehive' growing on it - in the scene where he, "Chris", sleeps at "Neil's" (De Niro's). Same scene, note how De Niro is dubbed, by himself, as Neil delivers the...(1/)

...movie's theme in its most famous line: He introduces it as an anecdote told to them by a guy in the prison yard - Jimmy McElwain (sic?). But that name was obviously slipped in post-production; it's said clunkily out of sync, like old Kung Fu movie dubbing. The original...(2/)

...name in the script must've been too close to that of an actual crook. Also watch De Niro in the scene where Neil meets Kelso re the bank package, when he doubts Kelso's advice about going through the front door: De Niro looks like he's reading the lines off idiot boards...(3/)

Similarly, when Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna explains to Hank Azaria's Allan Marciano why he "got mixed up with that broad", Pacino clearly almost says she's got a "GREAT BIG ASS" but, whether confused by his own wild hand gestures or just flunking the line, says "great... ass" (4/)

Anyway, there's painful dead air in there for a second. And, talking of Pacino's talking hands, you'll find it impossible not to think of The Comic Strip Presents' famous piss-take when watching Al's scenes with the chicken drumsticks & tv remote, with the kitchen faucet... (5/)

...the hotel towels he uses for bandages and with the portable TV Vincent can't abide being watched by Ralph, played by Xander Berkeley, who played Waingro in LA Takedown, director Michael Mann's TV movie version of Heat from six years before. That Berkeley is the only...(6/)

...actor who appears in both versions, and that his only scene in the latter ends with Pacino/Hanna dumping the tv - Mann literally kicking TV to the kerb - is just one of the breathtakingly deep plays in this film where any flaws you find - and that's me done - only serve...(7/)

...as beauty spots, further illuminating its overall stunning gorgeousness. You could be forgiven for thinking Michael Mann was just so glad to have De Niro and Pacino on screen together he let them run riot. But no - he worked them into the ground in pre-production, to...(8/)

...ensure they'd both know how to use a gun and address their on-screen colleagues like their characters would in real life. And it is real life: Yeah, I've been on the Chicago street where the shoot-out that inspired Heat happened. But all anyone has to do is watch Ashley...(9/)

... Judd's face as Charlene acts cool about a cuppa as her husband drives away forever: She goes from innocent young girl led astray by circumstance to sexy gangster's moll to old woman ravaged by the criminal life in three seconds of facial acting only rivalled by De Niro...(10)

...when he's driving through that tunnel, the love of his life by his side, his material world sorted, but wrestling with the Waingro problem - wrestling with his own codes, of decency versus expediency, of professional loveliness versus innate loyalty to friends and lovers:(11)

... his punch on Waingro outside the diner is the best punch in movie history, his execution of Waingro the greatest revenge scene in movie history - his failure to kill him earlier the root of his and his friends' downfall before the greatest meet-cute in movie history... (12)

... - "Whatcha readin?" - set him on the path to barbecues & ballgames and everything he thought he didn't want but absolutely needed. A book about metals? Of course it is - what else would a man desperately trying to shore-up his soul be reading? And then someone like you...(13)

...comes along and, despite all the awful lines about needles starting at zero going the other way ("a double blank"??), we know Neil suddenly hears what Chris was telling him - "For me, the sun rises and sets with her, man". Neil moves the furniture in too late but watching (14)

... him do it, and listening to him explaining it, under a typically sci-fi but warm-blue-lit palm tree, is visceral.

All Heat tourists remember are the suits with machine guns & balaclavas. The most recalled, if not memorable lines are delivered from a bank counter-top...(15)

...in the scene ripped-off so many times it has become the Led Zep to the heavy metal of heist movie tropes: Put them in suits (doesn't De Niro look like Elvis Costello?!) and make them tell the customers their money is insured and no-one wants to hurt them. And, while I...(16/)

...will never forget the first time I saw, heard, LIVED that shoot-out - at the old ABC in Sauchiehall St, later arguing in Nico's with my film student date that such gunfire COULDN'T be added post - what lives with me is Neil trying to stop the rain getting his friends wet:(17/)

...Dennis Haysbert's Breedan asking his Lillian why the hell she's so proud of him, and the way Vincent almost tears the arm off his step-daughter as he swings round in a car to try and pull her out the spiral she's in, caused by a guy he'd much rather find & jail than Neil. (18)

Yes, ultimately it's a film about a bunch of guys who murder people for money but, yes, ultimately, it is a film. The Mafia is real but The Godfather was made to grab our attention enough to communicate our own families to us. So, in Heat, the work-life balance is given... (/19)

...the real status and weight it has in all our lives. We could always be better at what we love doing if we had more time to do it and no distractions. But if there are no distractions - if there's nothing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat - what is the point of doing it. (/20)