Gathering of the godfathers

I recall being in the lobby of a grand hotel in Beverly Hills with Al Pacino who was deciding where to go for lunch. His associates hung around aimlessly. The automatic doors opened and closed, swish, swish by the dozen, back and forth and back again, in the time it took one of the most important stars of his generation to make up his mind where to have pasta.

Bobby ain't easy either. Flashback to his restaurant in New York's Tribeca and Robert De Niro, after months of negotiations, is mumbling about one of his string of Oscar-worthy performances. Quotable? Forget it. He's inarticulate when he's asked if he would like more to eat. Blueberry pie? Strawberries? That other most important star of his generation took one of those long pauses. It wasn't effective. He still couldn't decide.

Al and Bobby. Bobby and Al.

When Michael Mann finally got them together on screen for the first time (they never shared a moment in Godfather 2) he, thankfully, had to make the decisions. His movie Heat, which is going to be one of the most talked about works of the year, is released on Friday.

Mann's stars are back on top form (De Niro just takes the edge but it's always going to be an argument) in a cleverly formed crime thriller. It pitches good and bad and all the abrasive anomalies associated with cops and robbers into the tarnished tip of a Los Angeles acting as a moral Twilight Zone.

Pacino is the cop Vincent Hanna. A detective with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), he's a dedicated hunter. De Niro is the clever psycho Neil McCauley, who is equally driven. His gig is to commit spectacular hold-ups and if a few guys get blown apart that is just part of the business.

This isn't cat and mouse but a couple of veteran foxes on a Grand Prix of a chase.

Mann, who made the cult thriller Manhunter (Scotland's Brian Cox co-starred, creating the first cinema version of Hannibal Lecter) and The Last of the Mohicans as well as his hugely successful television series Miami Vice, is, by intent and CV, a stylist.

By getting Pacino and De Niro on screen together he has also proved his patience and his talent as a diplomat. The actors have been rivals for major movie roles for a quarter of a century. Pacino won an early contest when he won the lead in the landmark Picnic in Needle Park in 1971. ``I have known Al for a long time and we have tried before to work together. I had to meet Bob, and after he read the script he said yes. As actors they are in their prime and I think they do some of their best work in this film.''

De Niro won his first Oscar in 1974 as Best Supporting Actor for his young Vito Corleone in Godfather 2. Pacino had to wait until his eighth nomination, for Scent of a Woman three years ago, to take the Best Actor prize.

Mann knew he had the chance to create a mythic moment on screen. Someone said it was like getting Ben Hur to sit down with Spartacus. As the writer as well as director of Heat, Mann pondered on how his stars would fill the screen together.

The script has Pacino's Hanna pulling over De Niro's heist-master McCauley on a freeway. Hanna asks the man he wants to arrest to have a cup of coffee.

``The background is as monochromatic and minimalist as I could get because, boy, I did not want to take away from what was happening on Al's face and Bobby's face,'' says Chicago-born Mann, who still seems surprised it happened.

He says he shot both actors simultaneously, each man on his own camera - which was very difficult to do - but he had wanted their reactions to one another in performance. ``I thought of it as a duet between them,'' he says.

Mann, who graduated from the London Film School in 1967, is a research extremist. If he's writing a bank robbery he talks to the police and to the criminals. ``I like to move through a sub-culture until I feel the colours and the patterns and tones and rhythms of the lives of the people and the place.

``It's like Vincent Hanna's pursuit of McCauley. It does have a funny sort of Pirandello pattern to it. But that process of taking it on multiple levels, of understanding the complexity of human nature and intelligence, is something detectives are aware of and actors are aware of and directors ought to be aware of.''

During his research Mann visited California's Folsom Prison (as in the Johnny Cash song) as did De Niro and Val ``Batman'' Kilmer, who plays one of McCauley's cohorts with scene-stealing panache.

Mann, like Pacino and De Niro, expects involvement. Mann gets and stays involved. He wrote the first treatment of Heat in 1980. The real Neil McCauley was killed by a detective in Chicago in 1963. ``I heard that the detective had some sort of rapport with McCauley and that was the kernel of the movie.

``It would be trite to say that they were the flip side of the same coin. McCauley and Hanna share a singularity of intelligence and drive but everything else about their lives is different.''

Like Pacino and De Niro. They also are not the flip side of each other. Pacino is 55 and De Niro three years younger. They have appeared in some of the best of cinema during the past two decades.

The two stars approach their work in totally different ways, he says. ``Al learns his words three weeks beforehand and will never need to look at the screenplay again. He goes to sleep with the words. He dreams them, although what comes out is unpredictability. What we are both after is spontaneity.''

De Niro, however, approached his work through the physical details of his character. ``He questioned whether he would wear this shirt, how he would do his hair.''

Next month there is another helping of the man who won his Best Actor Oscar for Raging Bull in 1980 when he reunites with Martin Scorsese for another insightful look at the Mob. With Casino we are in Las Vegas where De Niro's Ace Ronstein is a casino runner, Sharon Stone is his falling-apart wife and life, you so terribly know, is going to go so dreadfully wrong with the bad guys watching the bad guys checking on the bad guys.

The film, which with a gala screening closed last year's London Film Festival, is yet another opportunity to see De Niro in a thoroughbred performance. De Niro, busier than ever, also has the title role of The Fan. With age he seems to want to do more. He's turning on the heat.

As is Pacino, who once waited several years between movies. He has two films - Two Bits and City Hall - planned for later this year and is at present in post-production on Looking for Richard, a focus on Shakespeare's Richard III which Pacino directs and stars in.

Al and Bobby. Bobby and Al. Busy boys.

Will they make another movie together? Decisions, decisions, decisions . . .

Born

n New York, April 25, 1940

Major movie break

n The Godfather, March 1972

Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor

Movie milestones

n Serpico, December 1973 - Brilliant portrayal of whistleblowing cop; memorable as undercover hippie.

n Dog Day Afternoon, September 1975 - Mesmeric performance as New York loser in bungled bank heist.

n Scarface, December 1983 - Hysterically malevolent as Cuban coke dealer Tony Montana.

Bad times

n Withdraws from movies for four years after hopeless miscasting as fur trapper in Revolution in 1985. Concentrates on stage work and ``heavy drinking''.

Comebacks

n Sea of Love, September 1989 - Bursts back to form as morose cop opposite explosively sexy Ellen Barkin.

Good Times

n March 1993

After 25 years and eight nominations, wins Best Actor Oscar as embittered, blind ex-army officer in Scent of a Woman.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Born

n New York, August 17, 1943

Major movie break

n The Godfather Part II

Oscar for Best Supporting Actor

Movie Milestones

n Taxi Driver, May 1976 - Magnificent as Vietnam vet alienated from ``open sewer'' of city.

n The Deer Hunter, December 1978 - Steelworker caught in Vietnam nightmare. Russian roulette scenes to die for.

n Raging Bull, November 1980 - Best fight movie ever. Best Actor Oscar.

Bizarre Times

n Penchant for taking small parts. Oddest as subversive heating engineer in Orwellian fantasy Brazil, June 1985.

Violent times

n Goodfellas, September 1990

Horrifying brutality in Scorsese's Mafia masterpiece.

n Cape Fear, November 1992

Harrowing performance as tattooed wacko mounting terror campaign against lawyer Nick Nolte.

Good Times

n September 1995

Follows Scorsese's footsteps with directional debut in A Bronx Tale.