I have been obsessing with what I can only call my “taste” as it pertains to movies lately. It started after I went from rotating my four favorites to trying to go back to a set four that I would keep from now on. I wanted to try to cut out the pretentious behavior and be a little authentic with my choices (as if literally anyone gives a shit).

This exercise created a crisis. Before I was trying to come up with cute little themes now it was trying to find the four movies that defined my personality and taste. I took it half seriously and the half that did was curious to see where my head was at. I think going back to your roots is important in those conversations but I think its clear that, like anyone, my taste has changed over time so when I lean on a clear choice as a favorite now it feels weird. Eventually I did figure it out and I promise it will change again soon.

But it got me thinking about my relationships to movies and how the movies relate to one another. I don’t there is any better example of the collision of my interests at 17 and 27 than how Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight relates to Michael Mann’s Heat. Today I realize that Nolan wasn’t just giving me a Batman story that was grounded in realism but he was also tapping into the energy and sensibility of a filmmaker who has become one of the most important to me personally. It’s not like I’m Indiana Jones in the map room discovering this either, Nolan said as much when he lead a conversation with Mann and the cast back in 2016. Nevertheless I wanted to investigate the parallels between the movies and why they work so well for me and everyone else.

“I think you and I are destined to do this forever” – Joker

Two Sides of a Double Headed Coin

In Heat we have Al Pacino playing a cocaine abusing LAPD detective named Vincent opposing Robert De Niro’s character Neil. One is a life long criminal the other is a cop with a broken marriage and mess of a life. Throughout the movie both characters are playing a cat and mouse game against the other. Neil’s life is turned upside down when he mets Eady a woman who could potentially give him the life he never had if he could simply let go of his life of crime. But for Neil there is one last score, one more bank to hit and if they can pull it off it’ll be game over forever.

In The Dark Knight we find Bruce Wayne looking for an out so he no longer has to be Batman and can be with Rachel Dawes. When the Joker comes to Gotham he quickly gets leverage of the mob and wages war on the city. Thus kicking off a similar cat and mouse game between him and Batman. It is important to Bruce that he gets this case solved before Rachel moves on with the new Gotham District Attorney Harvey Dent. A man who Bruce believes can politically and socially impact the city without the legal grey area. But the Joker proves to be a challenge for him. Batman is a symbol and an idea that we learn in Batman Begins will not kill. Meanwhile in one of the most menacing scenes in the history of movies the Joker declares that Batman must turn himself or people will begin to die. Slowly bodies pile up and pressure mounts. It’s clear to him that killing the Joker and breaking his code will be the only way to truly take him down.

A very simplistic plot synopsis of both movies. Two men with opposite ideals facing each other down in the big city. I see the most iconic scenes of these movies differently now though. In Heat there was a lot of conversation around the movie about De Niro and Pacino on screen together for the first time. Despite being in The Godfather Part II together they had never shared a scene until the moment in a coffee shop when Vincent and Neil meet for the first time.

It’s some of the best acting you’ll ever see and it’s one of the rare moments in the movie when Vincent really seems to connect with someone. It just so happens to be the man he’s after. He’s a cop that is in so deep and has been in the fame so long that the only people who truly understand him are criminals. And while he may hate them and want them thrown in prison there is an understanding that he is the way he is and he needs them for him to be able to do what he does best. They share in this moment a mutual understanding that they don’t lead the lives of normal men. Neil has his values and code he lives by and Vincent his. They are different in respect to what they are after but how they live their lives and what must be sacrificed is very similar.

Compare that moment to a similar one in The Dark Knight when the Joker has been captured and is being held for questioning. First by Commissioner Gordon, then Batman. In a world intentionally meant to be grounded and realistic we have a man in clown makeup and another dressed like bat at across from one another. The Joker says what we all thought watching the scene from Heat. He tells Batman that he is not a cop and he isn’t like anyone else in the city. He says that the he is the only one who understands him.

“To them you’re just a freak like me.”

Despite Batman’s code and the fact that the Joker is all in on chaos he knows that there is no normal person in the life of whoever Batman is that can truly understand what it means to do the work he is doing. Because much like there is no greater threat than Joker, there are no greater heroes either. They were made for each other no different than Vincent and Neil. Nolan having a scene like this in the movie raises the maturity of it. Anyone could understand the simple concept of good guys vs bad guys but by having a moment here and later on with Dent where to really get things done the lines have to be blurred and purity greyed you find the good and the evil start to feel a little closer than you realize.

Both these scenes in different ways reveal to the audience that all four of these characters are cursed. To lead the lives they do and operate with very specific codes of conduct, or none at all, leads them down a path that ultimately ends in punishment one way or another for all of them. There is only justice as long as it is required.

What Bus Driver?

Alright we’ve gone on long enough without talking about bank robberies. Both have good ones but there is a reason why the one in Heat is maybe the best we’ve ever had. It has been championed for the incredible realism of the gunfights that ensue. Legend has it that the reloading and use of weapons done by Val Kilmer and Robert De Niro in the movie is so accurate that the military uses it during training.

It’s a staggering feat of action filmmaking that pushes the story in a new direction. In one of the movies most memorable scenes Neil tells everyone the risk, he knows hitting this bank will be risky and odds are they aren’t coming back. But his crew is committed and ready to take it on anyways. The result is a Val’s character getting shot in the neck, Tom Sizemore’s getting killed and the crew a shell of its self. It’s the moment the movie flips and forces De Niro to (nearly) make his grand escape with the new love of his life. In a lot of ways we watch Heat not just for the meeting mentioned earlier but also for this apex in the Michael Mann movie making experience. He takes all the things he is known for and absolutely lets a rip in one of the more maximal yet seeming practical action sequences we’ve ever had.

In The Dark Knight a bank robbery comes much earlier in the movie. Instead of being a fork in the road moment we have the first step in a long line of them that sets the Joker on the path of not only taking down the new District Attorney but also the entire Gotham underworld in the process.

Years later I ponder if the Joker even needed to rob from the Gotham City Mob to achieve his ultimate goal of complete anarchy. Surely he could’ve just set off on some of these plans without sending that message. But there are some practical purposes to it. For one he needs the man power that taking all the leverage from the mob provides. He takes the mobs money, Lau secures all their money into one location, Batman brings him in from China and then Dent brings down the RICO charge and suddenly the mob loses its teeth. Now with the already stolen money the Joker can step in and pay the street grunts, expanding his crew. A neat idea but it would require him to get all the money himself. So as we see he convinced the crew on the robbery to kill each other off saying they’d get bigger shares if there were less of them. He was also able to get on the job without them knowing he was there. No chance for leaks, middle men, and he had control of the money immediately. It’s a genuinely impressive feat in screenwriting I must say. And it really kills a narrative the Joker himself pushes throughout the movie that he has no plan.

When you watch both scenes side by side there is a lot similar beats and framing of shots. That’s probably because there aren’t THAT many different ways to rob a bank but also certainly because Nolan wanted to hone his inner Mann when shooting his own robbery. In both scripts the robbery is not a robbery for the sake of an action sequence. But both set the table for what happens after it. Despite being in different parts of the script the lives of everyone involved on both sides of the crime are changed forever. I think it’s true of both filmmakers that nothing happens in their movies just because. There is a focus intent to everything they do that can be felt in their stories and the characters that occupy them.

So what does this all mean? At least for me personally it was an ever present reminder that movies are always speaking to each other. If not in their plot then certainly in their cinematic language. But I do think that things like this only happen when allow filmmakers to make the movies they want to. In a world where art collides with cooperations, we are going to side with the artists every time. When our movies are allowed to breathe and find their own voices we see these strands of DNA along the way. It can lead people down new roads of their cinematic journey and push them into directors, genres, and an entire era of movies they may have never found before. In my personal experience following the threads of what I was cared most about (Batman for example) lead me to places that have changed how I view the world and my place in it. It also just allowed me to find really cool stuff and sometimes thats enough. But in a world where we get less and less movies and I would certainly urge anyone to follow the threads of those who inspire your directors and to open to go places you’d never typically go so that you can find even more movies to fall in love with.