Roger and me, we don’t always agree.  Once more, my hearties, to movie reviewing, this time of “Heat,” the 1995 remake of ‘30s public enemy #1 stuff — Muni and Cagney, move over.

“Heat,” shown last night on AMC, also gets to the human side of murder.  The Enemy, played by deNiro given an Irish name (!), is a lover of Amy the Judge, whom he does not force to stay with him as he heads for the lam, having created several widows while taking other people’s money.  Nice guy!  The Cop, played by Pacino, has a wife (his third), also quite fetching, aching to be loved, whom Pacino may split with for honorable reasons — married to his job and all that.

The rest of the policemen are kept fairly anonymous, including the dick played by Monk’s Captain Leland Stottlemeyer {Ted Levine}.  He is one of many officers of the law shot in hot blood (lots of it) in a huge city shootout and chase following The Bank Robbery.

During the robbery — a “score,” we hear several times from various good and bad guys, and that’s our main gonif-style patois for the night — the deNiro Irishman stands on a counter and reassures the dozens of customers that their money is safe because insured by the federal government: “It’s the bank’s money, not yours,” he announces from his FDIC script.

Earlier, we watched Pacino and deNiro talking lifestyles in a coffee shop — it was Pacino’s idea: he had pulled deN over on a city highway and suggested it.  From this conversation we realize that deN simply rejected the barbecue– and ball game-related life for the adventurous — hardly a dishonorable choice! — and Pacino had fallen in love with chasing bad guys — with two and a half shipwrecked marriages to prove it.

So it goes in Los Angeles, where the “PD” never sleeps and private lives take it on the chin.  Meanwhile, the plot sleeps.  It’s ragged.  That is to say, it has extremely sparse structure.  Its trademark is obfuscation.

This movie leads the viewer to think warmly of the acting abilities of various characters, while waiting for them to finish their scenes.  The viewer ends with commendations all around. 

Apart from the bludgeoning it provides by way of much shooting, much blood, and much heavy waiting for Things to Happen, it leaves him untouched, ungrabbed, and ready for bed.  That last is enough to recommend it.

And Roger?  He gave it an A-minus, offering this in re: the coffee shop conversation:

The scene concentrates the truth of “Heat,” which is that these cops and robbers need each other: They occupy the same space, sealed off from the mainstream of society, defined by its own rules.

They are enemies, but in a sense they are more intimate, more involved with each other than with those who are supposed to be their friends – their women, for example.

Blah, blah, blah: erzatz sociology-cum-glorification of schmucks by way of postmodern categorization.

Phew! Time for bed.