The ‘Heat 2’ Cast Is Shaping Up. Here’s Everything We Know

The story also jumps forward in time to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, where Shiherlis becomes enmeshed in a complex global black market supply-chain drama between two Taiwanese expat families competing for dominance of the illicit import/export trade. It sounds complicated, but not much more complicated than it would be if I tried to describe Michael Corleone’s foray down to Cuba with Hyman Roth in Godfather II with a one-sentence synopsis. The timelines eventually braid, and the story reaches a thrilling conclusion set in Los Angeles in the year 2000.

The novel was a canny move by Mann, who can be seen as in the midst of a decade plus long box office cold streak. Blackhat reportedly made $20 million on a $70 million budget while Ferrari made $43.6 million on a budget of $95 million. There is a case to be made that this does not matter because Ferrari is pretty good and Blackhat rules—but that aside, if you’re trying to talk a studio into giving you $150 million for a set-piece-packed thriller with a sprawling cast and a story that hinges on shooting in multiple exotic locales, dropping a novel that both expands the universe of your most beloved hit and lays out a clear proof-of-concept for a film adaptation is probably a smart move. (Amazon/MGM are backing the project, after Warner Brothers balked at the pricetag).

The book adds depth and context to the story of Heat without diminishing its power, as over-explanatory, here’s-where-I-got-this-scar, world building IP shit has a tendency to do to its source material. We understand better why Hanna appreciates McCauley because we’ve seen the level of scum and stupidity he was up against in the 80s in Chicago. Pacino decided Hanna was doing key bumps offscreen and delivered one of the great cokehead performances of all time; the book makes his drug use canon. It also reveals that both McCauley and Hanna were adrenaline-junkie Nam vets. And while I won’t spoil too much, as alluded to above, McCauley endures a tragedy that adequately explains the tortured-loner philosophy of strict non-connection.

I suspect the parts about Shiherlis’ exploits in Paraguay are where some readers will lose interest and/or patience with the novel, but these sections are a crucial expression of Mann’s philosophy, and they put Heat in direct conversation with the digital criminal world Mann explored in Blackhat. “Neil McCauley, Michael Cerrito, Chris Shiherlis, Trejo. With all their expertise, what were they? They were maybe the best,” Shiherlis thinks to himself at one point. “But at what, being 19th century bandidos robbing banks?” Through Shiherlis’ personal and professional growth, the novel suggests the digital frontier is the next logical place 20th century criminals—like the crew from Heat, or Frank from Thief, or several other Mann protagonists, alienated and ideologically opposed to society’s customs, indignities, and institutions—would migrate to.

The book is process-obsessed, yet very fun pulp (“Cerrito looks calm. Like a grenade looks calm, with the pin in”). Although you might expect something different from a writer-director known for depicting hardened criminals the way Terence Malick does blades of tall grass in a windswept field, this isn’t Cormac McCarthy (or even McCarthy in crime-novel mode); we’re in the territory of a Don Winslow (whose blurb is prominently featured on the back of my copy’s dust jacket), with maybe a dash of Thomas Harris, a less-funny Elmore Leonard, or Lawrence Block.