Indeed, the TV movie practice session for Mann's 1995 triumph
Heat. What's it like then? Pretty crap to be fair, the plot feels undercooked (as does the script), heck it outright takes massive leaps and bounds in the overall story arc. It feels cheap, it's lacking coverage, the performances are mostly over-the-top or even wooden ... it just feels relentlessly cheap and half-done pretty much.
But then again, maybe it was a totally necessary practice in order to achieve the sheer brilliance of
Heat, the proper full-on film version (not made for TV at all, of course) which continues to blow socks off to this day - indeed,
Kane & Lynch as well as
GTA IV have both recently riffed on Heat's famous bank heist sequence.
At times, yes, you can see Mann's talent seeping through in some of the shots and some of the dialogue, but like I've said, it smacks of lacking, mainly in the resource department.
When you've already seen Heat, it's damn hard to sit through
LA Takedown without glancing at the clock a few times. Perhaps my thoughts are overly harsh, and yeah there are some redeeming qualities to it ... but to be honest, it is pretty naff now.
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