Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

So, there I was, dozing off in bed, about to turn off the TV when this movie starts up, Michael Madsen's eyes on the screen, giving the first monologue about how 90% of cops wind up never shooting their weapon. I was hooked right there.The first act gives us a summary of a normal week-day's early morning preparation, getting ready for a day on the job, putting on your work clothes, making sure your name tag is straight, revising your weapon: all the things that define you.The second act is the violence. While the robbers sit in their car outside of a Bank of America waiting for their initial target, the other primary actors are doing their jobs of law enforcement. When the target arrives, it doesn't go where the heavily-armed thieves have thought it would: confused, they decide to rob the bank. Everyday people see them enter and call in the emergency. Chaos ensues. When the duo emerges from the bank, they are met by dozens of police officers. The shootout begins with bullets flying everywhere from AK47 machine guns. The police figure out the two men are wearing body armour as they seem impervious to the return fire. Endless volleys and blood spattering moments as projectiles rip through vehicles, buildings, making targets of anyone and anything. Eventually, the bank robbers are stopped by sheer determination on the part of the LAPD.The third act is the aftermath: destruction of public property, picking up the used brass casings, a review of the injuries, recognition of the heroism under extreme fire. And a denouément that shows how life just goes back to "normal" afterwards: the bank reopens the day after, life affirmation and dedication. We see in the final scenes a close up again of Michael Madsen describing the events and his reaction, and the camera pulls out to reveal that it is part of a sequence being worked on in an editing bay of one of the television stations that covered the shootout.This made-for-TV production is absolutely gripping. It is almost a documentary re-enactment, but for small embellishments that hold interest by making the participants human and are dramatization. You may find yourself unable to take your eyes off the screen as it plays out. Madsen, Livingston and van Peebles give us good performances.

Queasy mixture of right-wing sentimentality and fetishistic displays of incredible artillery destruction. As high velocity bullets evacuate cars, property, and humans, accompanied by gorgeous sound design, the presentation is in that insulting, shitty as all hell "CSI"style, with unwanted smash cuts, jump cuts, stutter-cuts, smash zoom-outs, unmotivated zooms, etc. This all intended to somehow enhance the scenes of people re-enacting one of America's most deadly and terrifying shootouts. The characterizations of the bad guys is almost Mack Sennett. As if casting two over-sized Eastern European heads wasn't enough, they have to scowl and leer and smack their lips. At least cinema's most notorious cop-killer Michael Madsen gets to play a saintly detective. On spectacle standards, the movie delivers in spades its volcanic gun battle, with at least 40,000 squibs and exploding cars providing scenery. The propaganda which follows, nearly rhapsodizing over the day when police get to carry machine guns, is childish--considering the movie's immature style.. Does the cinematic splendor of the preceding shootout deserve to have its day with police officers firing modified AK-47s?

I saw the real news footage at the time this all happened and i can tell you that this movie in my opinion is a waste of time. A complete senseless drama with over dramatized acting. One word about this movie that keeps coming to mind is STUPID. To sum up this version of the story as it is portrayed in this movie: think of Days of our lives on steroids, and that's it. That's what this is. What i still can not believe is that 100 LA cops and not a single one can or even thought of shooting at the head or legs till the very end. Even then our swat team hero who was late ("I'm 10 min out"-"There in 2 min"-"I'm on the scene") and went on about being a hero and how he came to be a hero and what it's like to be a hero didn't really do much to the last single bank robber who was down to his handgun because his AK-47 got jammed. Another word just come to mind: PATHETIC. I hate this movie.

Two masked bandits are discovered holding up a bank. They're dressed in black, wielding automatic weapons, and wearing body armor. They're quickly surrounded by dozens of LAPD and SWAT members. Instead of surrendering they make a stand in the parking lot and spray lead all over the place, wounding police and civilians alike, until they're finally shot down and killed.In summarizing this 44-minute war, one of the SWAT members being interviewed, Ron Livingston, remarks that in a situation like that, "You either have the fire power or the will power. We had the will power." Is he kidding? The police are all around, taking cover behind cars and other objects, and pumping rounds from their pistols into the two bandits, who casually stroll around and shoot it out, toe to toe, until their deaths. They don't make any serious effort to escape. They'd rather die.There were really two ways a film of this real-life story might have gone. The writers might have given us plenty of material on the home life of the police officers. It would have tugged at our heart strings. And it would have taken up screen time until the final brief, bloody confrontation on the streets.Or, they might have judged that the audience for a movie like this really weren't that interested in having the cockles of their hearts warmed. They wanted an action movie "based on a true story." At any rate, that's what they got.The home life of the police, and their comradeship in the office, are briefly sketched in, just enough to let us know how diverse and yet how normal they are -- a pregnant wife, a black cop who wants to keep kids from becoming gangstas, the stern officer in charge of the SWAT team, the team member who once let a suspect escape only to learn that he later murdered someone during a robbery.Surprisingly, the bandits are given some material to work with too. They live alone, like slobs; they're ruthless and one is the expectable ugly punk, but at least we're able to tell one from another. And their later circumstances almost generate a bit of sympathy for them. One of them, hopelessly surrounded and with an AK-47 that doesn't seem to work (unusual for such a weapon) shoots himself through the head out of desperation. The other, having survived the impact of innumerable bullets, is barely able to drive the getaway car at the pace of a man walking, while being pursued by fifty men intent on killing him. It's a tense scene, seeing that bullet-riddled car crawl slowly along an empty Los Angeles residential street.Michael Madsen and Ron Livingston are both quite good in their police roles. They're the ones we get to know best. But the writers have almost succeeded in divesting the characters of all personality. There are so many gun shots and slow-motion cartridges bouncing off the asphalt, so many bullet holes appearing in some many cars, so many shattered windshield turning to lace, so many bodies rushing from place to place, that the people play second fiddle to the gun play. The climactic shoot out in "Heat" was just as electric but more involving because we knew the men involved.During the first ten minutes I thought the director might pull it off, regardless of which path the script itself took. The introductory scenes were casual and there were some interesting camera angles. But then Yves Simoneau blows it. I understand the need for close ups in a television movie, although it could be argued that we need them less now than we dead when everybody was watching 15-inch screens. But close up follows close up inexorably, invariably, with the devotion of the obsessed. Often it's not a close up of a whole face -- just two inexpressive eyeballs peering out of black woolen ski masks. Slow-motion shots of bodies collapsing was trite two generations ago. There are shocking jump cuts, seriatim, sometimes three in a row, focusing on such important objects as the "Hollywood" sign. The only thing missing is the camera's wobbling as if wielded by a spaz.Throughout, there is the constant complaint that the bandits are armed with Chinese-made AK-47s, formidable sub machine guns, while the cops only have their little Beretta pistols. It occurred to me while watching this that the audience might neatly be divided into two polarized groups: (1) Those believing that neither the bad guys nor the cops should have AK-47s, and (2) those believe that everybody should have one.