It seems unfathomable today. Incomprehensible. A head-scratcher for the ages. Yet the truth remains that, released in 1995, Heat, the pulsating, epic-length, labyrinthine crime thriller written and directed by Michael Mann, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, and Natalie Portman, didn’t receive a single Academy Award nomination from those antiquarians, not even a technical pity nom. Film-critics associations were almost equally obtuse, overly besotted with the maudlin likes of Leaving Las Vegas and its empty liquor bottles.
