And slight cracks were beginning to show in De Niro’s wall of thespian imperviousness (nowhere near yet the vast chasm that would define his later career, with wretched performances so incalculably empty and bereft of caring, not only did it begin to assure that if De Niro was in a film it was probably bad, but it began to lead to retroactive re-consideration of his early work, wondering how much of his success wasn’t created through some fortuitous union of brilliant director – i.e., a Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola - with an empty vessel they could fill – i.e., De Niro – and reminding of the early scathing words of the late critic Pauline Kael, who had already begun indicting De Niro back in the early 80s, claiming he was perfecting the con-art of ‘non acting’). Pacino was just a few years removed from having won, astonishingly, only his first Academy Award… for his vacuous and shamelessly audience-pandering role as the irritable old blind man with the heart of gold in the hopelessly cloying Scent of a Woman. The first (and last time) I previously caught up with Miami Vice creator Michael Mann’s splashy, with a sheen of uber-gloss, mid-90’s LA crime film Heat, packed with famous faces and character actor types and wildly marketed as the first time those gritty superstars who catapulted to fame from out of the brilliant cinematic landscape known as 70’s Hollywood, Al Pacino (as the homicide detective Hanna, legendary on the force for putting away the best of the best from the criminal front) and Robert De Niro (as the super-suave, cold and calculating big-time head thief McCauley, who doesn’t hesitate to kill, or walk away from anyone in ‘30 seconds’, if his survival depends on it) would appear in a film together across from each other (they were in Godfather Part II back in the early days, but that didn’t count, as they appeared in different timeframes), came at a time that I was beginning to grow slightly wary of the two all time thesp giants that I had previously worshipped unconditionally at the celluloid altar. The actor told the crowd at the Q&A session that he has actually waited years to admit to Hanna's particularly nasty habit.Cinéma de Sève, part of the Cinéclub/The Film Society program
Having never actually revealed this fact about this character, it seems that that such a secret has weighed on Al Pacino's mind for quite some time. However, Pacino didn't reveal whether or not he went full method for the role, so we'll have to keep wondering. That's right, the hero of Heat has an affinity for that illegal white powder. Anyone who has seen Heat will tell you that Pacino's character is the more animated of the two, and that's because of one very specific thing: Lt. Vincent Hanna (Pacino) and Neil McCauley (De Niro). Nolan delved into the duality of the film's lead characters, and questioned both De Niro and Pacino regarding how they reconciled the differences between Lt.
THR reports that Christopher Nolan recently hosted a Q&A session after a screening of Heat, during which Michael Mann, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino himself joined him on stage.