Heat 2

HEAT is inarguably one of the best films of the 1990s, and writer/director Michael Mann hasn't been able to put its characters out his mind.  This lead to a novel which he co-wrote with Meg Gardiner called Heat 2, published last August, which is both a prequel and a sequel.  As soon as the book was announced, the curiosity buzzed over whether Mann would make a new movie.  This would be confirmed shortly after the book was released.  Of course it will be a movie.  The world of master criminal Neil McCauley, master detective Vincent Hanna, and their respective posses is just too cinematic to remain merely in print.  It will be a tough one to adapt to this reader's satisfaction.  A huge novel with so many characters and storylines (taking place in Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Paraguay, and at the Arizona/Mexico border) that a miniseries seems more feasible to capture its breadth.  Even if Mann creates a 3 hour + epic, at least a few subplots will bite the dust.

But Francis Coppola had the same method with GODFATHER II, going backward and forward in time from the original saga.   And he did it in 3 hours and 20 minutes.  And it worked rather beautifully. 

Heat 2 picks up right where the original movie left off.  Neil has been taken down by Hanna at LAX and his co-hort Chris Shiherlis has barely escaped alive.  Hanna and crew question McCauley's girlfriend Eady about Chris' whereabouts.  Meanwhile, make-it-happen-guy Nate arranges for Chris to get far away from the city.  He will find himself in South America at the employ of an Asian crime family, one at war with another Asian crime family.  Chris will get to know (very well) his boss' daughter, Ana, a college student who due to tradition will be passed over to inherit the business, yet is far more savvy than her party boy brother Felix, who is set to be heir.   

The book also travels back seven years to 1988, when Hanna was a cop in Chicago investigating a series of home invasions led by a scumbag extraordinaire called Otis Wardell, one of the most odious characters I've encountered in a work of fiction.  Neil, Chris, and their co-horts are also in town for an overnight bank haul, one that goes off without incident.  But their later, insanely ambitious heist of Mexican drug lords' cash? Not so much.  Primarily because Wardell gets the lowdown on their whereabouts.   We will also be there when Chris meets his future wife, Charlene, who in 1988 was a Sin City lady of the evening called Cinnamon.

For Part 3, which takes place in the year 2000, just about everyone ends up in L.A., leading to a literal slam bang climax.  A few of them, actually.

"Epic" would be accurate for Heat 2.  A mammoth, richly detailed thriller with a scope that if wholly preserved would lead to a movie that would cost a least a few hundred mill.  The nuts of bolts of police work, cyber scams, and heists are densely articulated, sometimes requiring a reread but always engrossing.  The violence is unflinching.  The action scenes are expectedly explosive and logistically insane; the celebrated street shootout in the original movie seems small scale by comparison.    Mann and Gardiner really outdid themselves.   This is truly the definition of a "page turner".  One to keep you up way past a reasonable bedtime.   There are also several passionate sex scenes which undoubtedly will be recreated for the cinema.

The character profiles are extensive across the board.  You really get inside Chris' head this time, and you'll wish Neil had survived to Part 3.  Moments of deep introspection are plentiful.  Unavoidably, I again saw Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Val Kilmer as I read.  It will be interesting to see if they are re-cast.  Perhaps unlikely, but if so, will they be "de-aged" via software (as in THE IRISHMAN)?

My only complaint? Some of the dialogue between men and women.  Never Mann's strong suit, and maybe not Gardiner's either? Some of it sounds too self-conscious and pulpy.  Don't let that (or a few wild coincidences and contrivances in the later plotting) stop you.  Heat 2 is a highly satisfying continuation.