10 Insane Movies You Didn't Know Were Based On True Stories
7. Heat
Michael Mann's acclaimed 1995 crime thriller Heat has long been widely celebrated for bringing acting legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino together on screen for the first time. It's also noted for its detailed, true to life representation of both police work and professional thieves.
What you might not have known is that De Niro's character, Neil McCauley, is not a fictional character. He was a real bank robber, who had already served half his life behind bars on theft and murder charges, before he was tracked down and shot dead by Chicago Detective Chuck Adamson in 1964.
By the 1980s, Adamson had turned from cop to writer, and met Mann whilst working on TV series Miami Vice. Mann was fascinated by Adamson's stories about his strange kinship with McCauley, and used it as the basis first for 1989 TV pilot LA Takedown, then Heat in 1995.
A number of key scenes really took place, including Heat's most memorable moment: the tense yet respectful meeting in a diner between De Niro's thief and Pacino's cop, renamed Vincent Hanna.
Adamson played Mann a tape recording of the conversation, and the dialogue between De Niro and Pacino is very close to what was really said.