Dearly Overlooked Classic

It's not cops. It's marines. From IMDb Trivia:

"Val Kilmer was thrilled to learn that the moment in the gunbattle [sic] scene where he runs out of bullets, and rapidly changes his magazine, is regularly shown to Marine recruits as an example of how to perform the action properly."

I think the parallel between the two men (the cop & the criminal) was interesting... their outlooks on life... their inability to connect to the real, important social/family lives... was interesting... but they were primarily men of action, not men of introspection... it didn't have the neurotic attention to the self that appeals to critics and the academy...

Heat is an iconic movie... I think it's too masculine for the current era's sensibilities, which might be why it isn't mentioned as much nowadays... It's a gem...

If I went into it expecting more of an action blockbuster like Die Hard or something, I could see getting bored because it's paced out as a drama. It's almost just hiding as an action movie.

The first time I saw Spy Game I was expecting more of a Mission: Impossible or James Bond type spy movie. It was more of an "espionage thriller", so I walked out of it a little bored and put off. I watched it again later with some friends who hadn't seen it yet, and because I knew what it was trying to be that time I got into it and now I really dig the film.

I'm not trying to say, "Oh, the only reason you didn't like Heat is because you had 'wrong' expectations," but I guess I'm just musing aloud (or, the message board equivalent of "aloud") about our very, very different experiences with the film.

"the robbers rarely have to reload..."

Not only is that not true, but in fact HEAT did such a realistic job of showing the reloading process, that the USMC actually used Val Kilmer's reloading footage from the shootout scene to show Marine recruits in Fort Bragg how it's done.