When I first saw Heat in 1995, I was a thirteen-year-old girl sitting next to my dad on the couch. I was there for one reason and one reason only: to see Natalie Portman, who is nearly exactly my age, and thus I was sure that if Natalie and I ever met, we would be best friends.
You can imagine I was mildly disappointed by the movie since Natalie was in it so little and as an adult, I could remember exactly two scenes from a nearly three-hour movie. Al Pacino dragging Natalie Portman out of a bathtub, her wrists and thighs sliced open. And Ashley Judd on a balcony, waving off a very handsome Val Kilmer, protecting him from the police.
That was it. Two scenes out of 3 hours, and both of them belonged to the women.
An interesting quirk of memory since Heat is very much about men. That is not in dispute. I rewatched it recently, and had a lot of thoughts. So many, in fact, that I have an hour-long video coming out on YouTube about it next week.
But in the meantime, I wanted to focus on how this men's movie from the 90s does women. How they were portrayed struck me, especially looking back at 30 years of commentary on the movie. I've noticed that almost nobody talks about them honestly. The people who do talk about them keep asking the wrong question.
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The Wrong Question
Ashley Judd, who played Charlene Shiherlis, is now better known for feminist activism. But in the 90s, she was a hot babe who overcame bad men and very often had scenes where she ran through the woods. Surprising no one, she said in a recent interview that the way women were portrayed in Heat is "not okay."
