I feel silly writing about Heat when The Rewatchables Podcast has been so thorough. It was one of their first episodes, and they’ve returned to it twice more, including once with Michael Mann. The only fresh angle I have is mentioning the 1989 TV Movie, L.A. Takedown, which works as one of the greatest DVD Bonus Features because it’s a 97min dress rehearsal for Mann’s crime epic.
Takedown is visually bare bones, with a washed out look and sorely missing Mann’s widescreen compositions. The acting is varying degrees of terrible, except for a few familiar faces, including Xander Berkeley who appears in both films. In L.A. Takedown he chews it up as troublemaker, Waingro. You get the expected versions of Heat’s classic scenes, like the shootout and the coffee conversation. Some scenes take place in the same locations.
Heat had 6 months of pre-production and a 117-day shooting schedule. L.A. Takedown prepped for 10 days and was completed in 19 days of filming. Mann said that comparing one to the other is “like comparing freeze dried coffee to Jamaican Blue Mountain,” and he directed both films. The Editor is the same too, Mann regular Dov Hoenig.
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