Another recent flic that got me thinking about the nature of
the hard-boiled character was _Heat_ with De Niro and Pacino.
Both men play the parts of very strong-willed hard-boiled
characters with a heavy attitude, one on each side of the
law.
While I would not call it a "hard-boiled film", I think it's
interesting the way it toys with (even <gasp>
deconstructs) the hard-boiled persona by focusing on each
character's underlying values and his attachment to a wife or
girlfriend.
De Niro, the quintessential brainy bad guy, claims that
whatever attachments to people and things you make in his
business, you have to be ready to drop them in 30 seconds and
move on -- a sort of hard-boiled mantra of self-reliance. He
tries to go against his timeworn principles and retire with a
girl he's fallen for, but it destroys him.
Pacino and even Kilmer have their own spins on the
hard-boiled vs romantic angle, and the film as a whole spends
quite a lot of time on these emotion-laden interludes that
give the potentially hard-boiled heros soft hearts that rob
them of that title. There's a tension in this film between
the two poles that I think reveals things about both
attitudes.
This film left me feeling rather dissatisfied, but I can't
help wondering if it isn't because I'm too strongly enamored
with the hard-boiled/action approach for me to accept the way
it gets undercut. Unless it was just a weak film. Without De
Niro and Pacino with their usual stirling performances, would
it have flown at all?
Cheers, --- Phil Lycé¥ Astier, Aubenas, France
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