While Michael Mann prepares to bring a sequel to Heat to the big screen, he confessed to Total Film that he hasn’t been all that impressed with modern-day action movies.
“I’m just bored by it. It’s not very interesting,” Michael Mann said of the current state of action movies. “I mean, sometimes the choreography is so outrageous that it’s fascinating, and it is quite good. But generally, no. It’s just stale.” I’d imagine some of you might have something to say about that. Released in 1995, Heat featured an all-star cast that included Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Natalie Portman, and more. The film has gone on to become one of the most influential films in the genre, and its iconic action sequences still pack a punch.
Following up Heat with a sequel so many years after the release of the original may seem like a bad idea, but Michael Mann seems confident that Heat 2 will be a worthy continuation of the story. The novel begins just one day after the events of the original movie as it follows a wounded Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) desperately trying to escape Los Angeles. The story also flashes back and forth to events years before the heist and the years immediately following it. “I always wanted to explore the early lives of these guys,” Mann said. “Also, to find a way to bring the past into the present and the present being about 2002, seven years after the events of ‘Heat’ the movie.” Some have suggested that the sprawling story of Heat 2 might work better as a TV series, but Mann is committed to adapting the novel into a movie.
There’s fantastic work in television, and for whatever reason, it has a short half-life,” he tells Total Film. “Dino De Laurentiis, one time, said to me about television, ‘Michael, there’s a small screen and there’s the big screen’. That said it all, you know? I’m not putting down television. It really is [a golden age]. But the big, cinematic experience – there’s nothing like it.
Heat 2 was published earlier this month and has received rave reviews. What do you think of Michael Mann’s statement? Are modern-day action movies lacking compared to the action movies of the past?