alobear | Heat and Bettie Page reviews

I've heard a lot of good things about Heat over the years - and it turned out to be more years that I had expected. For a film released in 1995, there's a large amount of rather scary 80s hair on display, but that's mostly made up for by excellent acting and a largely well-written script. The character development on both sides of the law is extremely well done, with motivation and inner depth clearly apparent in nearly all of Robert De Niro's heist crew, and Al Pacino struggling to maintain a life outside a job that is nearly all-consuming. Inter-personal dynamics among the male characters are very well portrayed, and the famous scene between the two heavy-weights does live up to the hype. However, the film is rather let down by the female side of things - something that I don't tend to think about as a matter of course, but in this case was glaring. None of the female characters have much in the way of depth or believability - they are very much one-dimensional foils for the men to bounce off, which is a real shame, since there's a lot of talent in the female cast. In some ways, I think if would have been a better film if it had focused wholly on the crime and chase aspect and not burdened itself with throw-away relationship scenes that padded out the length and added little to the impact.

On entirely the other end of the scale, The Notorious Bettie Page is a very personal story, told amid a very public grand jury investigation, and is all the better for its focus on the title character as opposed to the media storm. Gretchen Mol is excellent as Bettie, portraying her with great flair and very believable sincerity. I found the switches between black and white and colour to be an unnecessary distraction, but overall it was very enjoyable and an interesting take on the tale.