Basically the same thing happens as in ‘The Godfather II’. Twenty-seven years after the premiere of ‘Heat’, Michael Mann recovers his particular pencil sharpener duo, but to tell us more about his past than about his future.
If you’re curious as to what happens after the end of Heat, Michael Mann’s 1995 film, the sequel in the form of a novel that has just been published in the United States will tell you little about the fate of the characters. Come on, he’s not going to tell you where they end up, because you already know where they end up: Neil McCauley (Robert de Niro), dead and well dead (here there are no miraculous resurrections that ruin what the film has told us); Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), finally aware that both he and Neil are right in their way of seeing the world, although it has led him to lead a tyrannical existence dedicated to the pursuit of bad guys at any cost and not especially happy with the revenge that is charged; and Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), escaping that it is a gerund. The story advances in Heat 2 with Shiherlis, but it doesn’t really tell anything new since it focuses on delving into the past of the characters of Robert de Niro and Al Pacino, providing more information about their personalities and their motivations. The sequel focuses mainly on the suicidal impulses of the Los Angeles Police Department detective in the eighties and nineties. Heat 2 it also follows Shiherlis in the ‘present’, where he resumes his career as a criminal, but more than to advance the story as a narrative device to show that the two characters left alive are relics (especially Shiherlis).
Michael Mann has acknowledged that he has resorted to the novel format to continue the story that he took to the cinema in 1995 twenty-seven years later, although in the story he tells only 22 years pass, as he cannot resort to the main actors of the film, Val Kilmer, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino, to return to their characters. Heat 2 looks more like the godfather II than to a sequel of those that propose new adventures for the characters (it’s not a prequel either, because the most interesting part of the relationship between the characters has already been told to us). It is not because Pacino cannot appear twenty-seven years older, although at 82 he should, ahem, be retired from the State Security Corps and Forces, but because both he and De Niro should appear always young and fresh and I think That lesson we already learned with The Irish. The power of the two characters is in their dialogue and any CGI distraction would take us out of the action. Which is not to say that Mann does not plan to bring the sequel to the big screen or to a streaming platform (we understand that HBO Max is due to the fact that the rights are held by Warner Bros). After all, the original idea of Heat It was born as a telefilm before being converted into a film (I know I’m not telling you anything new, but just in case someone didn’t know of the existence of L.A. Takedown).
That says Heat 2? Chris Shiherlis is the last man left alive from the gang. Hurt and desperate, he has to leave Los Angeles. Shiherlis travels to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. There he finds work in the security of a Taiwanese conglomerate that is behind a network of illegal software that moves on the black market. The narrative intersperses his story with chapters set seven years earlier, in 1988, when McCauley’s team tries to take over a drug cartel’s business in a Mexicali motel. In Chicago, meanwhile, Hanna hunts down a dangerous ring of thieves who torture the victims of their robberies. He picks up the characters in their past. There is a moment in the novel when Hanna, on her way home from work, unable to proceed with her investigation of him, suddenly finds herself on a deserted side road. He turns off the headlights, hits the gas, and tries to figure out how long he can hold out like that (spoiler: long enough not to die).
The novel obviously addresses the passage of time. Shiherlis finds himself lost in a world of cybercrime, far removed from bank heists, but that has nothing to do with that scene with Hanna and MaCauley in a coffee shop, chatting.
Source: Fotogramas
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
