copying and pasting my post on Heat, fleshed it out a bit
Caught this at the cinema for the second time, after having seen it already over a dozen times, but its remarkably still as much as an escape into the sphere of crime, and blue fog of Los Angeles, as the first time I saw it. Gun to my head I guess I would say this is my favorite film, there are plenty of films I love and will remark on how they're "the best movie ever!" immediately after watching, but this is likely the top spot. And all of those films, I seek to take a lesson from them, maybe multiple, and different lessons upon rewatches, and it wasn't just this particular watch that had me stuck on this one line, but after Neil comes back from the robbery that went all over the six o'clock news, and Eady realizes who the man is and who his friends are, he responds "It rains, you get wet". Its a simple line, but it sticks with me, and it explains essentially everything in life for me. Action is inaction, inaction is action, actions have consequences, and inaction has consequences. Every step you take has meaning, and every hair is numbered.
In life we're told to take risks, and follow our passions, and do what we love, everything that falls under those inspirational individualistic self actualization prophetizations. Of course we should follow these aspirations, though they are quite often always the outlook and outcome of the sunny side of things. When we take these leaps and massive steps in life, we of course take the risks into account and hope to land on the right side of things and be successful in our attempts, but almost rarely do we get a true visualization and understanding of life on the flip side. Neil is a cold and calculated man who is one of the best at what he does, he is almost robotic in how he carries himself, keeping no attachments, living a stoic, brutalist lifestyle, allowing little to no margin for error. Knowing this, its certain that he knows both sides of the coin with the result in taking on this final bank job, even talking Cerrito out of it, mentioning how he's going away for a while anyway, but even with all of that, the reward is still there, the juice of the moment is still there, for Neil, the preparation gives him just as much as a high as the holding the gun and taking the money does. The result as he walks out of the bank isn't so sunny though, the hours and weeks of preparation don't add up enough, the plans fell through, the rain came in, the crew got wet, but the risks were known.
The Dylan song I identify this film with the most is Every Grain of Sand. Despair, premonition, hope, freedom, regret, tranquility, are all spiritually expressed in Dylan's understanding of the calamity of his own journey as an artist. "In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand... That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand...Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand", every second of life is equal to the next, a minute, hour, or even day can feel longer because of a certain action, but they are still the same length. In Heat, the master's hand takes action. The signs are there, the opportunities are given to the crew to avoid the fate they meet, but their character, lifestyle, and how their mind has been molded has all lead them to this fate that they were always going to meet. The two characters involved with this line of dialogue, Michael and Neil, aren't exactly characters who are foreign to the understanding of this quote. Sure, both of them want old age and riches over any sort of peril, but Michael meets his fate in a rush of ecstasy, as earlier in the film he says "the action is the juice", in his final moments, he gets the action, he gets his juice, and that's as high as he'd ever get. With Neil, there were only two outcomes he saw, slain down by law, or an escape to paradise, he was content with both of these in some sense because he knew he was never going back to prison. He doesn't have the inclination to look back on any regrets, and in his life of crime, he stares death in the face, and hears his name every time he gazes into the doorway of temptation's angry flame.
This is a film about men who know their limits, and try to break them anyway.
