Travis Bickle’s crazy unstable and freakish double life in Taxi Driver. Max Cady’s wild southern accent and bloodlust in Cape Fear. Jimmy Conway’s terrifying willingness and ease to murder in Goodfellas. Jack Byrnes’ comedic torment of Gaylord Focker in Meet the Parents. A Vito Corleone that even rivals Brando’s in The Godfather II. These are just some of the iconic roles that have made Robert De Niro a household name for the past 50 years. But none of those roles quite match up to De Niro’s role as the main antagonist Neil McCauley in Michael Mann’s 1995 crime thriller Heat. 

Always Checking

There are many things to admire about De Niro’s performance as Neil McCauley in Heat, like his coolness, his steadiness, or his swagger. If we know one thing about De Niro, it’s that he’s always prepared for a role. Along with co-star Val Kilmer, the two went through intense training to master their movements with rifles for the film’s infamous shootout scene with police, and De Niro even studied the real-life bank robber Mann based McCauley on as well. You can see his preparedness for this role in his ever-so-subtle movements and changes in eyeline in the film. Whenever he walks into a room, he checks his shoulder and cases the room for cameras. If McCauley is stationary, he scans the area around him, watching, waiting, listening. He becomes a master thief subtly before our eyes, without any big blow-ups or big speeches; we know from his demeanor and eyes that he is in charge. You cannot take your eyes off him as he commands a bank or simply sips a cup of coffee. 

Sympathy for McCauley

De Niro’s McCauley is unlike his most famous characters. He is a very patient, meticulous, and cold-hardened criminal who winds up wanting love and a life outside of “what he’s after.” He doesn’t bring that unruly crazed energy of Bickle or Cady; he is controlled and calculated. McCauley doesn’t have a thirst for violence or have fits of rage like Jake LaMotta or Jimmy Conway. While he is a criminal, he is a criminal who, in all honesty, we can root for. He is a unique De Niro in that we sense that this is something that we have seen him do before, but by the end of the film, we realize we have witnessed De Niro do what he hasn’t done before. When McCauley feels the heat around the corner, we, as an audience, feel it too, and we hope that he can get out of it. You want him to make it out; you want him to have his dream. In De Niro’s other roles, you can enjoy his character, but there is a very clear right and wrong and good and evil attached to most of his famous roles. Goodfellas, Casino, Cape Fear, Godfather, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver. 

These are not what we would call sympathetic characters, but for some reason, with McCauley, even as a criminal, we are sympathetic towards him and his cause, regardless of his actions. The way De Niro plays it, we see a man doing his job, and this is his job, just like Pacino is a cop because it’s all he’s good at. That, above all his other characters, is the most intriguing.