MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

mariabowman-66756 It is great to see a low budget version of a great film. Michael Mann's 1995 masterpiece Heat was actually conceived way back in the 80s by the director Michael Mann. He decided to make it then with the limited budget he had. The scenes and even dialogues are verbatim but it is great to see what a bigger budget can get- from better thespians of the class of Pacino and Deniro to some amazing locations. This is a good film for film students to sit and analyze.

David OK so I'd probably have given this a 9 but felt the rating was disproportionately low and no doubt reflects Heat fans deliberately rating this down to show partisan support for their beloved Heat, rather than because they actually disliked this movie that much. Just a hunch! It's amazing to me how easily people will be polarised on a trivial issue. It's the same director FFS! What's the point of blindly hating one and adoring the other. It's not a football match.Forgetting about the bloody remake for a minute, you've got try to imagine this movie framed in the context of 1989. It was re-inventing an extremely tired genre with a brand new style. Rather than lazily re-hashing the hackneyed cops good/crooks evil template, it attempted to give a believable account of how a specialist team of cops and a serious crew of crooks operated on different sides of the same coin. It tries to make you sympathise with both sides which was *incredibly* rare back then. It introduced shockingly believable and cold violence which was even rarer.Whatever you make of this now, you need to at least acknowledge that it would've been ground breaking and original when it came out, and lets face it, that there would have been no Heat if it weren't for this.When I bought this on DVD 10 years or so ago I noticed a couple of things that may have contributed to the bad reviews.First of all there was the appalling quality of the DVD recording - that really takes a lot away from the style of the movie and that's just unfortunate. Maybe down to bad storage or just a cheap pressing of the DVD.Secondly was how dated it looked. OK so Michael Mann's original batch of 80s movies/TV series were never going to age well because they whole-heartedly celebrated 80s fashion, design, architecture, language and style. This worked so well on screen back then. The zeitgeist of the 80s was brutally different to what had preceded it - a bold industrial/chic/sanitised re-imagining of a stale flower power, earthy world. Some rejected it, others embraced it. Among those who embraced it were movie directors like Michael Mann, and John Hughes. Sure, 5 or 6 fashion fads later and it looks dated and ridiculous. Well guess what, that's exactly what those guys made of the 60s/70s fashions that they were rejecting and that's what the next batch will make of fashion now and so on and so on. That's no reason to close the door on art produced in a particular era. You've got to think bigger than that or you're going to miss out on some amazing old movies.There's a hell of a lot in the very well written dialogue which beautifully captures the values of the time it was made, e.g. "I'm a heavy hitter, I travel in circles, you know, like strata, strata at the top see? Cos I have access to some of the most precious commodity on Earth - information, data." If it sounds corny now, well remember it sounded sharp back then.Very few people agree with this but I honestly preferred the original Scott Plank and Alex McArthur as the cop/crook. I thought they were much more believable in those roles than the aging DeNiro and Pacino. DeNiro gave it his best but if I had to guess which out of him and McArthur had been inside serving time, I'd go with McArthur every time - he comes over as a very convincing psychopath who could kick off at any moment. As for Pacino, I think he was having a bit of laugh with his character in Heat to be honest - "...great ass" etc. Scott Plank was actually convincing as an ex marine turned cop capable of sprinting down the street hauling an assault rifle and after a crew that had taken down a bank.I also prefer Vincent Guastaferro to Sizemore as the driver, and Xander Berkeley has to be better as the weaselly, desperate, wannabe tough guy Waingro. The guy in Heat was way too tough and mean looking to play that part.Sure so more money's going to lead to tighter production, better music, better effects etc. No brainer. But in terms of capturing the spirit of the story, the locations, the characters & the interplay between them, LA Takedown wins for me.I do like Heat in its own right, but I will always prefer LA Takedown because it was the original and it is steeped in the time it was intended for. Just like I'll always infinitely prefer the 1964 Ford Mustang to the current remake even though it should always lose on paper. It's about originality, class, and the spirit of the era that went into it.

Plamen Totev Since I'm a fan of "Heat" I took the time to watch the preliminary material which Michael Mann created after long-lasting struggle to make his dream movie come true. Mann decided that he waited enough for a big-time production and to use this great script for TV release with the intention to continue it to a TV series.But, let's get to the point...1. Pros:1.1 I've read the 1994 revision of the script, which included unrealized shots and dialogue in the 1995's "Heat". The good thing about "L.A. Takedown" is that you have the chance to see some of those good lines and additional storyline, which serves as a bonus to what you already saw in "Heat". 1.2. Directing was very decent, but anyway I wouldn't recognize it that Mann stays behind it if I didn't knew already.1.3 You can see the growth from the original version to the remake as Heat. Comparing LA Takedown to Heat you can recognize the development and decisions which Mann took in order to make "Heat" such a classic that it is.2. Cons: 2.1 Poor Cast & Acting. Since it is TV low budget movie I guess we couldn't expect more but this was some "piece of work". Hanna's character was developed Okay, but that's all. Patrick McLaren (a.k.a. Neil in Heat) was a complete nightmare, it doesn't correspond to the image you can visualize in the script. I know that the benchmark is too high having such a great cast for Heat - comparison is out of the question.. Nevertheless those wanna-be actors on LA Takedown doesn't even deserve to be chosen for a porn movie with a storyline...3. Bottom line: if you are a fan of "Heat" and Michael Mann - see it for the above mentioned pros.. It's like looking at the draft of Mona Lisa or some other masterpiece - so it is kinda of interesting... If you are not a fan - then it is a waste of time.

Framescourer It's impossible to talk about this film in isolation from Mann's second, more successful attempt. They are almost identical films by virtue of the script, although there is different emphasis at given moments. Heat is a better film; it has the all the administrative advantages of coming after this one as well as better actors and a larger budget.Yet L.A. Takedown stands up well. Scott Plank (Hanna/Pacino) and Alex Arthur (Patrick McClaren/de Niro) are well cast, even adopting the same mania/iceberg opposed mannerisms as the more famous incumbents of the role. The raw existential despair that is the undoing of the two characters stays in the script but hasn't translated quite as well onto the screen - Laura Harrington's Eady says 'lonely' but doesn't look it, like Amy Brenneman does. Ely Pouget is an honest, worldly woman like Diane Venore though.There's one minor loose end but that's it really. We still get the trademark bleached look, set piece authenticity and soulful, LA-by-night shots that Mann likes. A fairly good thriller in its own right but a deeply fascinating one to watch in tandem with Heat. 5/10