Heat

A

Airborne Cadet

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I just watched the bankrobbery shootout in the movie Heat, and i have a few questions. I know it's just a movie, but some of the stuff made me think. First, when DeNiro + 3 or 4 BG's come out of the bank, Pacino has his LEO's moving into position. He tells everyone to wait until the BG's are in the car before they take them. Val Kilmer sees the LEO's and opens fire. Now it seemed to me that the LAPD was undermanned and didn't have the roads blocked off. The cars peels off and manages to move down the street quite a ways before the driver is taken out. This leaves around 4 BG's. The BG's managed to fight their way out and 2 escape-DeNiro and Kilmer. The BG's had the advantage of being able to fire indescriminately and realistically, the LAPD would have to control its fire. But it seemed like the LAPD was just spraying the street without regards for bystanders. Is this what it looked like to you? Second, the LAPD had automatic weapons as well, but Pacino was brandishing something odd. Everyone else had AR15's or CARs and Pacino was toting a FN CAL. The LAPD doesn't use these does it? I've never heard of an LEA using this. Don't know if anyone really cares about this, but it was just something that piqued my interest.
 
It's a really good movie and shootout, but you have to overlook a few points, like the fact the crew is already inside the bank doing the robbery when the cops learn of it. Before the BGs can get from bank to the car, the police have left the station, driven to the bank and spotted the BGs exiting.

The time line is a little shakey. When Pacino and his guys exit the police car down the street from the bank, the only BGs not in the getaway car are Deniro and Kilmer. They have exited the bank and are heading straight to the street and their getaway car. Two of the cops from Pacino's car cross the street, move down the street until they are directly across from Kilmer, who opens fire on them, covering about 5 times the distance Deniro/Kilmer had to travel to the car.

Another minor timeline problem is when the crew is in the diner waiting for the last member to arrive for the bank job. The guy calls and says that he cannot shake the cops following him and Deniro tells him to lead them out of town, away from the bank job. Deniro recruits the new driver and they head to the bank.

In the time it takes them to get to the bank and rob it, the other member is captured by the other bad guys, driven to his house, tortured, wife is tortured, raped and killed, he tells the bank info which is then relayed to the cops that then proceed to the bank and catch the robbery in process.
 
Yep, it's just a movie. Unfortunately, one of my favorite hobbies is looking for mistakes in movies. :) And DVD's only made it worse.
 
Other than the time line and other little errors... HEAT is still a pretty danged good movie.
The only other bank robbery movie that I like is BANDITS.
HEAT became very boring on the middle, but Bandits was a hoot all the way through.
 
Ticky tack mistakes as far as hollywood goes.

I like heat for the importance it places on commitment. The robbers were definately commited to thier actions - that was what made them dangerous. Deniro's character was also commited to his job of catching them, but he wavered becasue of his family problems, which made him weak. This wavering was what made the movie interesting - made you wonder if he'd get them or not...

Hey George - how about Quick Change with Bill Murray for a fun Bank robbery movie? I was still laughing over the initial heist when the rest of the movie ended...
 
The timeline is pure Hollywood, -the fighting/shootout sequences are ala Walt Marshall, former Vietnam Ranger, Richmond PD Entry Team and Rangemaster at Gunsite. Walt has survived gunfights in over 3 decades of military & LE.

Anyone in the Bay Area wanting real gun survival skills training should take his classes
website http://www.awt-co.com/Director.htm

-if you ever meet him, ask him about his encounters with Sonny Barger...
 
If the scene and been changed so that the takedown outside the bank was quick and clean, the movie would have been boring.
 
Pacino's weapon was an FNC. Sizemore had a Galil. Studi had a Mossberg. Kilmer and DeNiro both had short M16 variants, hard to tell exactly what from the video. DeNiro's pistol was a Sig. Pacino's was a Commander. At the drive in Kilmer had a G3, Sizemore had a Benelli M3 Super 90 (in pump mode), and the bad guy that snuck out of the back of the truck had a Steyr TMP. There was a FAL in the initial armored truck heist, however I was unable to make out what kind, though it kind of looks like an STG.

:p Ok I admit it. I'm a gun nerd.

Erick, amen brother! 13th Warrior has some great philosophy. Viking throws sword to Banderas. Banderas: "I can barely lift it!" Viking: "Then grow stronger!"
 
Deniro's piece...

Sorry but Deniro's piece was an H&K USP. There's a good shot of it when he returns to his pad at the beginning and places it on the glass coffee table. You can even see the decocking lever and the "F" & "S" symbols if you look close enough.

The one thing that impressed me most with this movie was the sound. The gunshots were alot better than the majority of Hollywood flicks.

Talking tactics & thinking, I was most impressed with "The Way of the Gun". When Benetio Del Toro breaks the glass in the stolen station wagon, he's smart enough to break the window behind the seat that he eventually occupies. The moving and covering scene at the beginning was also clever.

Oh my mistake. I just watched Heat again and Deniro's character uses the USP for the first half of the movie and then uses the Sig from the heli on the freeway scene onward.
 
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One of the things I liked about Heat was that they actually reloaded during the bank shootout. Deniro and Kilmer would move and cover each other using controlled bursts of fire instead off the typical spray and pray.
 
Heat was a great flick, but like anything else it ain't perfect. For one thing, no one ever seems to mention the weight of the money that DeNiro's crew took out of the bank. Twelve million dollars, right? So each man was carrying around $4mil. In bound stack of hundreds, that's just about ninety pounds of cash. Lots to be moving around with (at one point, DeNiro is dragging Val Kilmer, along with two bags of cash, through a parking lot. Whew.)

Still, compared to most gun movies Heat is a paragon of realism.

- Chris
 
Sorry but Deniro's piece was an H&K USP. There's a good shot of it when he returns to his pad at the beginning and places it on the glass coffee table
Click to expand...
That is the only scene that it shows him with the USP. For the rest of the movie he is using a Sig P226...but,I could be wrong.;)
 
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