Michael Mann’s “Heat” is the Most Laughable Oscar Snub of All Time
8 min read
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Apr 29, 2019
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Nearly 25 years after it first hit theaters in 1995, Michael Mann’s epic crime drama “Heat” is considered a modern classic. It also failed to garner any Oscar consideration in the run-up to the 1996 Academy Awards telecast.
Seriously. Not one single nomination to its name.
It’s a stupifying snub that outranks Best Picture almosts like “Pulp Fiction,” “Taxi Driver,” “Brokeback Mountain” and last year’s “Roma” as arguably the Academy’s most egregious oversight ever.
It’s not as if the pieces hadn’t been in place at the time either. You had: Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, both of whom reached the apex of their 90s-era career resurgences with this film; a holiday season release date, typically saved for awards bait and Disney’s next Star Wars cash grab, and; a studio in Warner Bros. that had been on a Best Picture tear for nearly a decade (see “The Accidental Tourist,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Goodfellas,” and “The Fugitive,” to name just a few).
Somehow, Academy voters still chose to ghost a film that has become a modern crime masterpiece. The funny thing part is that its influences can be felt almost everywhere in pop culture — from “The Dark Knight” to the “Grand Theft Auto” video game franchise to real-life armored car robberies in countries around the world.