1. Heat

What do you get when Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, two of the greatest actors of their generation, go head-to-head for the first time in the same movie? If you’re visionary director Michael Mann you get Heat, one of the best stories ever told about the relationship between cops and robbers. The film is the story of a professional thief and a detective facing off against each other whilst slowly coming to realize that their lifestyles have a lot in common. The whole thing is built around blistering performances from the leads (it was made before either of them got lazy and started phoning it in as they did in later movies) and the director’s ultra-cool signature visual style. The movie was a decade in the making and was based on one of Mann’s earlier works, the TV movie L.A. Takedown, which Mann created as a scaled-down version when it seemed unlikely that the Hollywood suits would back the project. Heat, when finished, was definitely worth the wait.