Michael Mann's gutsy telefilm tells the tale of two skilled professionals--one a cop, the other a criminal--who aren't as different as they think. Vincent Hanna is an intense cop on the trail of ruthless armed robber Patrick McLaren. After a botched heist, the two men confront each via a full scale battle on the seedy streets of Los Angeles.
Scott Plank Alex McArthur Michael Rooker Ely Pouget Vincent Guastaferro Richard Chaves Victor Rivers Laura Harrington Daniel Baldwin Clarence Gilyard Jr. R. D. Call Peter Dobson John Santucci Xander Berkeley Juan Fernández Tony Xauet Sam J. Jones J.W. Smith Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Mary Broussard Aixa Clemente Mike De Luna Ed DeFusco Robert Gammons Donald Grant Emmett Grennan Al Jones Anthony Lattanzio Leo Lee Show All…
Crimewave, Os Tiras de Los Angeles, Made in L.A., Showdown in L.A., Sei solo, agente Vincent, Сделано в Лос-Анджелесе, Corrupción en Los Ángeles, Хвиля злочинності, Přepadení v L.A.
USA
USA
Action!: MANN MEN - In the Heat of Digital Mike's Manhunt
Practically a TV quality (in every sense), much grounded, and less memorable version of Heat. Everything here is remade and expanded upon in the epic crime action film starring Pacino and De Niro. Some of the most memorable moments from the film, such as the exchange in the diner and the ensuing gunfight, are depicted here, albeit on a more modest scale.
This is not to say that the picture fails on its own. The energy that Mann brings is there, and there are a lot of exciting scenes. Considering it was originally intended to be an ongoing series, the production value of this TV movie is surprisingly high.…
L.A. Takedown: Who are you?
Heat: I'm you, but stronger.
What an absolutely fascinating watch. L.A. Takedown has the bizarre legacy of being the televised blueprint for Michael Mann's magnum opus, Heat. And as such, with all of the unmistakable parallels between the two pictures, the refined latter being more or less beat-for-beat, almost shot-for-shot at times, the experience that is this failed NBC pilot turned 90-minute broadcast event is endlessly compelling, even if it isn't all that good.
Mann's approach to this film is more akin to his work with the hit series Miami Vice than any of his prior cinematic endeavors. The project has a strong visual presence backed by a handful of competent sequences, but the complexity…
"Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints."
This is like a TV fashion model dream that Michael Mann woke up from to make Heat, but to compare the two is really an exercise in pointlessness given the ensemble cast and studio resources at his disposal for the later movie. It's a blast to see Mann's tightly controlled aesthetic in a TV movie, though, with action that hits almost as hard as it would later on the big screen.
I've said this many times in the past, and God willing I will go on to say it many times in the future, but I have never meant it nor will I ever mean it as sincerely and vociferously as I do at this moment: Xander Fucking Berkeley.
heat's really rough demo reel, which is to say it's not too shabby, because heat is amazing. more of a nice bauble for cracked-out michael mann obsessives like myself who feel irrationally beholden to plumb the entire depths of his career, but still, not totally undeserving of a casual watch.
Mom can we have Heat
No we have Heat at home
Heat at home:
Honestly though it's amazing how 6 year after L.A. Takedown was made Michael Mann created a remake almost scene by scene using 95% of the original script and transforming a made for TV movie into the masterpiece we know today as Heat.
Magic Mike Mann took this film out the oven and was like nah this needs to cook a lot longer.
"They don't make doors like they used to."
And such are the final words of Patrick McLaren, otherwise known as Neil McCauley in director Michael Mann's career highlight, the cinematic tour de force Heat. Needless to say my jaw was on the floor throughout this entire film. I'd heard that L.A. Takedown is basically a shot-for-shot earlier version of Heat, but sometimes you just have to see things with your own eyes, and I took turns staring in wonder at both how stupendously awful this film is, and how on Earth this crap got sandwiched in between Manhunter and The Last Of The Mohicans two of the director's other great films.
The acting is atrocious. Scott Plank, as dedicated cop…
If Michael Mann's kid had made their own movie with dad's help and connections but with a much smaller studio, it might look like this.
Way too much Billy Idol and some poor acting make this one of the poorest things Mann has ever done. The late Scott Plank channels all the angry Crockettism's of Vice with his own little twist which works pretty well. Alex McArthur plays his version of McCauley totally straight with no gradations of emotion, but the running time doesn't really allow for anything apart from the events to unfold.
Surprisingly the shoot-out retains the volume of the remake but is much more rushed and nearly the all the deaths suffer from the viewer's lack of investment in the characters.
It consumes you. It rots you.
You can best summarize this film with one of the particular things that is different from the film that would eventually become Heat: The line "For me, the action is the juice." is changed to "The action is half the juice." Appropriately, at best, L.A. Takedown is only half the film that Heat is. To then also lift a line from the Blank Check episode covering Heat, which I gave another listen at work following my recent revisit of the film, watching this and then watching Heat back to back makes for the ultimate defense for movie stars. If there's only one reason that this could be worth watching for, beyond wanting to be…
Essentially Mann’s TV dress rehearsal for Heat (sometime literally scene for scene and line for line). It’s weirdly clumsy and amateurish, especially for Mann at this stage in his career, apparently largely because of being shot on a TV budget and with only 30 days combined pre-production and shooting schedule - Mann himself called it a “prototype.” Hell, I literally saw the boom mike’s shadow at one point. But you can see all the pieces that would become Heat, and there are snippets of Mann’s signature style, especially in the flashily edited montages.
The performances are also a weak point, particularly Scott Plank in the Pacino role feeling very “1980s TV cop on the edge,” but lots of people who…
Mann's weakest mature work—a camera rehearsal for Heat, with stand-ins in place of actors. Contains about a dozen great shots, and quite a few bad ones.
Heat (Abridged)
I had seen this referred to as the inspiration for Heat but I was shocked at how similar they actually are. After watching, I saw an interview with Mann where he said he took the 180 page screenplay he had and just condensed it to make L.A. Takedown, then went back to the full script for Heat.
Attempting to judge it on its own merits, it's a great made-for-TV crime drama. It's hard to actually judge L.A. Takedown on its own though when it's so close to Heat. I found myself distracted comparing the two, and Heat is an improvement in almost every way.
Aside from not being as good as Heat, the only real issue with the…
