Heat: The McCauley Cut

Heat is just about the perfect film to edit. It's an amazing movie that's an hour too long, filled with unnecessary plot elements. Long ago, there were a couple of really good SD Heat edits that are now likely lost to the ages.

DawnRazor has pulled off something great here. This is not only better than the original film, it's easily the best edit of Heat, far eclipsing the previous edits.

The picture looks great and the edits are just about seamless. There was one added stock footage clip, an overhead night time shot of LA where the video was obviously sped up and looked very out of place, but outside of that it's great. The audio is another matter, however. Heat has a brilliant 5.1 audio track that really comes alive in those incredible shootout scenes, Unfortunately the editor has decided to downgrade that to a stereo audio track, where all the brilliance of the original 5.1 audio is lost.

That said, it's not a fatal flaw. The story is the star here and DawnRazor has presented it perfectly. The closing credits sequence is an absolute masterclass in fanediting and worth the price of admission alone. Highly recommended to all.

A classic movie is now more focused with it's 2 hour runtime. The new ending also works great, I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem. At worst, this is a cool alternate way to watch a classic. At best, you'll never watch the theatrical version again. Zero editing issues, highly recommended.

One of the best edits I've come across so far.

I couldn't think of anything missing except for "GREAT ASSSSS!" and some small side stuff with his step-family.

Focusing in on Neil and changing his fate was something I wouldn't have considered, but when you watch it like this with all the side plots sucked out there's no question that the new ending he got works. It was a fantastic way to give Neil the closure he wants, even though I personally believe he didn't deserve it (he was a mass murderer, after all). Still it was a nice change and well executed.

I have nothing negative to say, it was a perfect edit! Highly recommended.

A crisp and straight-ahead version of Mann's Heat.

A/V and Video quality are essentially perfect.

In the audio department, there's a moment at 28:30 where the vocals have been shifted out of alignment, and there was a cut further down the line where the music didn't carry across so the editing was obvious. But otherwise, the quality was quite good. The score was still nice and reserved. Felt a tiny bit quieter than my memory in places, but I'm getting old.

The revised ending was very well done, and actually more satisfying than I expected, though it felt more fever dream than grounded resolution. Ultimately, this is a story about tragedy (or at least it was), so this ending is hard for me to parse. I like it because I like Neil's character, but it also feels to-good-to-be-true. He wakes up, right?

In terms of narrative, my only concern is Donald's character. With so much story removed from the other people in Neil's orbit, it's conspicuous how much screen time Donald gets here. His story is very much self-contained within the larger picture, and is intended (I think) as foreshadowing to Neil's tragic end (after succumbing to his impulse to "go back"). Of course in this version, that's absent, which makes Donald's story feel like a superfluous curiosity in an otherwise straight-ahead Cop vs. Robber story.

I'm tempted to rate narrative a little lower, but with all that scenery chewing from Val Kilmer removed, you've done me a huge favor. Not to mention the removal of the absolutely terrible lines from Justine and Charlene ("What am I doing in this rat-bastard situation?!?", "You sift through the detritus...", etc.). Man, you should get a medal just for pulling that noise out. :)

Waaaaay better than the original! The studio release is just too long and drawn-out; I can't rate it higher than an 8, because all the deeper character development distracts and takes away from the watchability of a heist movie! This edit is the heist movie we wanted to get!

The only part missing which we are being robbed of is that classic Pacino line, "Because she got a... GREATASS!" which is now gone, sadly.

The audio & video quality is great; the audio editing was smooth and flawless; the video editing is probably fine, but there were two parts where it seemed to not have enough of a transition, by which I mean that we are in one place and then suddenly things are a bit too advanced along. I think those parts were 1) instantly being at the nighttime metals warehouse heist, and 2) being in the diner and then being on the road to the bank. I grant that this is not necessarily the editor's fault as there may be no material worth keeping to space out the transition. (The original movie may have spaced these scenes with character-development side story stuff which had to be cut, I get it.)

The ending is altered a bit, which I did not expect, and I do like it better though it is still not the ideal ending because of working within the limitations of material available. I did like that the credits began to be interspersed with the closing footage, that was not just acceptable but a very good creative choice.

Anyway, I'm very thankful to have found this version and it is easily a replacement of the original release.