Movies - TV
The Story Of Heat All Started With That Famous Final Scene
By DEVIN MEENAN
The final scene of the three-hour cops and robbers story “Heat” ends in tragedy as Detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) lethally subdues thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) after a shootout near the LAX airport. McCauley and Hanna shared a mutual understanding throughout the film, and now the thief lies dying as the two men hold each other's hands, conveying their emotions.
Director Michael Mann was inspired to write a script for “Heat” years before when he heard the story of bank robber Neil McCauley and Chicago Detective Chuck Adamson. Mann revealed that the final image influenced by the actual event drove him to develop the script into a feature, working from there to lead the story to its ending.
“I took that dialectical conclusion and worked it backwards into the structure and modified everything that was going on to serve that, that's when it all clicked into place for me,” said Mann. The director focused on the characters being mirrors for one another for the ending to work, making their few shared scenes memorable and their shootout for the finale heart-rending.