The Action Is the Juice: Ranking the Heat Homages

When Michael Mann’s Heat arrived in the waning days of 1995, audiences came for a showdown between two acting titans and walked away having watched a reinvention of the heist genre. Bigger, more sprawling, and more ambitious than the competition, Heat layered multiple subplots and fringe characters into its tale of a master thief hunted at every turn by a cop who’s just as obsessive as he is—a trope that has since become a staple of the genre.

Mann’s masterwork is known for its incredible action sequences and masterful performances from Robert de Niro and Al Pacino, who appeared on screen together for the first time. The two play opposite sides of the coin: de Niro’s Neil McCauley is a cold and calculated career criminal devoted to his craft above all else, while Pacino’s Lt. Vincent Hanna’s fixation on police work has left a trail of failed relationships in his wake. Naturally, both men respect the hell out of each other.

With its deep cast and story boiled down from Mann’s script for an aborted TV series, Heat quickly entered the pantheon of crime films as well as Los Angeles epics. While there are certain films whose directors have stated outright they were influenced by Heat, other choices on this list are more subtle in how they reference or subvert Mann’s work. So grab your rival and square up over a cup of coffee as we dive into the best Heat-like movies since Heat.

9. Takers. If there’s one worthwhile takeaway from Takers it’s that T.I. absolutely gives good villain. With his trademark flair for high-value thesaurus words and an almost reptilian energy, Tip is charming in the way the best bad guys should be. Unfortunately, the film around him isn’t quite as captivating. There’s an eight-figure armored truck heist that grinds the city to a violent halt, a crew of rogues that gets betrayed by one of their own, and a dogged cop on their trail. But it’s a strange state of affairs when T.I. is the best actor in a cast that includes Idris Elba, Matt Dillon, Zoe Saldana, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen (OK, that one’s not a surprise), all of whom spend most of the film’s many face-offs and action sequences sleepwalking. That’s likely because the script gives them little reason to tap in—Takers is about as paint-by-numbers as heist movies get.