In 1995, the movie "Thief Line of Fire" turned out to be a real and fierce street battle, an abundant and distinct character image, coupled with intricate character emotions and a compact story plot, so that "Line of Fire" redefined the height of Hollywood police movies. The film was directed by Michael Mann and co-starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The fierce conflict between the police and the bandits is permeated with thinking about human nature, and the screen is full of flying bullets, but every trigger pull is their cry for life, and the emotional catharsis behind the characters under the gunfight has become the key to the film's immortality.
Textbook classic duels
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are some of the biggest names in Hollywood film history, and from "Scarface" to "Once Upon a Time in America," they have created a large number of irreplaceable tyrants, and "The Line of Fire" is the first head-to-head duel between the two after "Godfather 2". In "The Line of Fire", Robert De Niro plays the toughest gangster in the gang and is the core of the criminal group's mind; Al Pacino plays the strongest detective in the police force, and being sharp and bold is the nightmare of all criminals. Because of his professionalism and self-confidence, Robert De Niro formed a team of cool-headed and well-divided crimes, robbing bonds, stealing metals, and robbing banks in the streets of Los Angeles; because he was calm and persistent, Al Pacino was a natural hunter, and he sacrificed his emotional life in order to constantly chase all kinds of criminals. The two movie kings Mars collided with the earth from the beginning to pave the way for the film with a strong smell of gunpowder, and the real explosion was before and after Robert De Niro robbed the bank.
The first time the two met was before robbing the bank, when Al Pacino invited Robert De Niro for a cup of coffee, and the two sides expressed their positions openly: Al Pacino would do nothing but catch thieves, and he advised Robert De Niro to give up; Robert De Niro was not interested in anything but robbery, and he advised Al Pacino to give up. This simple dialogue is not like a declaration of war between good and evil, more like a conversation between old friends, both sides stubborn, but they both see their own shadows in each other. Seeing each other and hating each other late, but also being right and evil are not opposed, they are doomed to a decisive battle in the end. The second encounter is when Al Pacino appears after robbing the bank, when Robert De Niro is about to escape, and the two teams' firefight in the streets pushes the film's plot to a climax. In this street firefight, there are no large number of serial explosions and heavy weapons of violence, but the conflict between the police and the bandits is vivid and real, and this duel is also used as a textbook in the police movie.
Under the struggle between the two sides, the ending of the movie is no longer important. Eventually, Robert De Niro, having completely escaped, was killed by Al Pacino in order to kill the traitors in the team. The showdown between good and evil must end with the defeat of one side, but what we remember more is the process, the aura of Robert De Niro's robbery and the heroism of Al Pacino.
Life under the duel is sad
If a police movie only achieves the ultimate in impulsive duels, then it will become a highlight of the moment, but it is difficult to become a classic of a lifetime. The real success of "Line of Fire" lies in the presence of flesh and blood in every character under the police conflict, and their presence always makes us feel the real pressure of life. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are leaders in various camps, but they are losers in the lives of ordinary people, one without marriage, one without love, and they can only use the duel between the police and the bandits as an outlet for their own release of pressure. Such character emotions make the original monotonous duel more exciting, and at the same time let people see the sadness of life through the conflict between the police and the bandits.
Robert De Niro has an almost perfect character in The Line of Thieves, he is clear-headed, calm, invincible, and stealing, but even then he has a fatal flaw: numbness. Robert De Niro's life is numb, he owns the best house in Los Angeles, but there is no one to accompany him to see the scenery. There is no room in his life for anything he can't put down in 30 seconds. So when the girlfriend first appeared to take the initiative to approach Robert De Niro, he was full of reflexive defenses, for Robert De Niro, he always lived in a kind of defense, he did not miss the past nor planned for the future, and when he decided to live a new life, the old grudges brought him into the abyss. This is the inevitable price of his choice of this path, and the emptiness in the depths of his heart is not something you can make up for no matter how much you have achieved.
Compared to Robert De Niro's perfection, Al Pacino's character in "The Line of Fire" is terrible, although he is the supreme presence in the police force, but three failed marriages are enough to make people imagine the bad in his life, and worse than bad is that he can never find a bad exit to break through. Robert De Niro put down the butcher knife and become a Buddha, while Al Pacino can only run in the dark, because his job is to face the coldest and darkest side of the world all day long, and those sinful crimes make it impossible for him to calmly face his life, so even if he can find his love, he will not get a happy marriage. At the end of the film, there is an impressive scene in which Al Pacino kicks down the television set placed in the co-pilot, and the failure of life, the thorns of work, he sprinkles all his anger on an innocent television set. What a kind of resignation and helplessness for a calm and experienced police officer.
A real showdown between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro
The success of "The Line of Fire" is undeniably the result of the duel between the two old movie emperors, but the real duel between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro is definitely not limited to the one-shot duel on the battlefield, but the collision of their entire lives. The two men and the police and the bandits have completely opposite positions, and they have only met a few times before and after, but they can have a real resonance. Because they will not give in for what they believe in, even if they sacrifice most of the excitement of their lives for it. So every collision they had was an exchange of souls, and every time they pulled the trigger of their weapon, it was a cry to life. So that the viewer has a different sense of substitution every time he watches, this is the charm of the movie emperor, which is the classic of "Thief of Fire".