Film Buffa: The role Adam Driver should play for Michael Mann in ‘Heat 2’
Stop thinking big. Think different.
He’s too tall for De Niro. Let’s just get that out there at the starting bell.
Robert De Niro, aka Neil McCauley, is listed at a generous 5 foot, 9 inches. While his acting talent stands taller than the Rock, Bobby isn’t not getting any dishes off the top shelf, and the details are important in a movie’s makeup.
In Michael Mann’s Heat, it was a battle of short Italians between De Niro and Al Pacino. An epic event that produced a sequel 27 years later, albeit in novel form.
Co-written with crime fiction maestro Meg Gardiner, Mann’s sequel interlocked two tales set for a collision course-seven years before the events of the 1995 film and five years afterwards. With the heat spotted around the corner with his new film Ferrari in theaters while garnering solid reviews, the thirst has grown for a film adaptation of the sequel.
Heat 2 would be an event film because it can attract movie fans of all kinds: the old school lovers would treasure a revisit to one of the best crime thrillers ever made, while the younger crowd could watch the original and find a lot to like. It’s not an older movie that went stale; it was made to be fresh for movie fans when they got to a certain age. For me, it was 13 but I digress.
Since he did just play the central figure in Mann’s latest film, Adam Driver (a man born by name to play Enzo Ferrari) is being linked to Heat 2. The actor and director are saying all the right things, doing press and events together. They’ll work again, and it would be a fine bet to place both of them on the sequel call sheet.
But he can’t play McCauley, which has been reported way too often for something that isn’t anywhere near cemented. It’s not a possibility unless McCauley shrunk 4-5 inches between 1988 and 1995. Short actors have played taller characters before, with the most popular occurrence being with Tom Cruise and Jack Reacher. The Amazon series fixed that wrong, but Mann shouldn’t attempt to push that one past audiences, young or old.
There’s someone else Driver could play, and it would be an indelible role to have. Otis Wardell is more up his alley, the guy who plays a part in each part of the sequel’s divided timeline. He’s the guy that runs into Neil’s crew in the ‘88 period, forever changing the way McCauley looks at personal acquaintances and his dangerous job. Wardell would then find himself on the wrong side of a bullseye scope when he comes across Vincent Hanna (played by Pacino in the ‘95 film).
Otis is a deadly home invader, breaking and entering rich family’s home under the disguise of a business before killing the husband and raping the wife. He and his crew are hitting houses all over LA, but they’ve been hitting the crime circuit for decades.
Described as tall and lanky in the book, Wardell fits Driver better than most characters, even Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), one of the few main characters who made it out alive. The sequel picks up right off with Hanna chasing Shiherlis out of town. It’s Wardell who curls the two back together, but that’s a site for your eyes and ears hopefully to soak in at a later date.
Driver and Wardell are a perfect match. Play a villain with a despicable layer of death hanging around his neck. A nice challenge for the actor after plainly Kylo Ren, a bad guy who broke good in the end. Otis stays on the WAINGRO side of good and bad, thankfully for the juice in Mann and Gardiner’s story. Much better than playing a guy who shrunk six inches in seven years.
For the record, Oscar Isaac and Jon Bernthal should play Hanna and McCauley respectively. Each match the look, feel, and tenacity of the original film’s characters and strike the right touch from my first read of the novel. Driver could be the weapon of mass destruction that brings it all together. The cast, which should find a way to get Mia Goth into the picture, slays from the jump if the pieces are aligned correctly.
That’s all I have to say on that topic. Next time I’ll be offering up small yet still thorough reviews of Saltburn, Bye Bye Barry, and any other movies that I’ve watched in the past month but didn’t find time to criticize.
Until then, the Film Buffa abides and suggests a subscription.