Heat | 1995

Stylemeister Michael Mann remakes his own 1989 TV movie LA Takedown six years on as a conscious love-letter to the architecture of Los Angeles.

The stylish overground rail station, at which Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is seen arriving under the credits sequence, is Marine-Redondo Station, 2406 Marine Avenue in Redondo Beach, South Bay. It's the southern end of Los Angeles’ Metro Green Line, running east and west between Norwalk and Redondo Beach, curving south near the Los Angeles International Airport.

Michael Mann seems to like this station. He returns to it for the final scenes of Collateral.

The hospital from which McCauley steals an ambulance, is St Mary Medical Center, 1050 Linden Avenue in Long Beach (seen also in the big-screen version of The X-Files) and, while Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) seems to be buying dynamite in ‘Arizona’, he’s no further away than Whittier, southeast of Los Angeles.

The bearer bonds robbery, where the security guards are cold-bloodedly executed, is on Venice Boulevard at Convention Center Drive beneath the Santa Monica Freeway, behind the LA Convention Center, south of downtown.

In the fraught aftermath, loose cannon Waingro is lucky to escape the wrath of McCauley during a confrontation at Johnie’s Broiler in Downey, south LA. The classic 1958 restaurant, seen also in David Fincher’s The Game, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, One Hour Photo, Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites and Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, closed down and was largely – and illegally – demolished. Amazingly, it’s back from the dead and has been rebuilt as Bob’s Big Boy Broiler, 7447 Firestone Boulevard.

Now a slew of locations which have closed down, starting with the bookshop where McCauley buys a book on metallurgy. It was Hennessey and Ingalls bookstore, which stood at 1254 Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The nearby restaurant, where Eady (Amy Brenneman) comes on to McCauley while he’s studying ‘Stress Fractures in Titanium’, was the Broadway Deli, 1457 Third Street at Broadway at the pedestrianised Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica (not to be confused with the Broadway Bar and Grill on the opposite corner, which you might recognise as record store ‘Trax’ from Pretty In Pink). The deli is now Lululemon Athletica, a sports store.

Not far away, on the Santa Monica sea front, was the also-now-closed Japanese restaurant staked out by Hanna, Zen Zero, which stood at 1535 Ocean Avenue.

Even worse, demolished and replaced by apartments, is the deserted drive-in, where Van Zant’s men set up a double cross. This was the Centinela Drive-In, which stood at 5700 West Centinela Avenue, Inglewood.

McCauley and cop Vincent Hanna meet up (the legendary first appearance of de Niro and Al Pacino on screen together) in upscale Beverly Hills restaurant Kate Mantilini, which stood for 27 years at 9101 Wilshire Boulevard until being forced to close its doors in June 2014. Only a couple of blocks west of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences HQ at 8949 Wilshire, the restaurant was a favourite with Academy members – and a certain amount of lobbying come Oscar time.

Breedan (Dennis Haysbert) throws in his job as dishwasher, when he’s recruited by McCauley as a driver, in one of the few remaining original Bob’s Big Boy burger bars, at 4211 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. A brass plaque by one of the tables commemorates the filming. This Bob’s, with its spectacular towering sign, was built in 1949 and is the oldest remaining Bob's Big Boy in the USA.

The major bank job is at 444 South Flower Street at Fifth Street, downtown, (you can see its geometric silver sculptures on the forecourt again in Fight Club and in William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA), and the subsequent mother of all shoot-outs spills out onto the stretch of South Figueroa Street between Fifth and Fourth Streets.

I first saw this movie the night before I took off to the States to get photos for the book. The next day, looking for a parking space in downtown Los Angeles, I swung into South Figueroa only to find myself in the middle of the shoot-out location).

McCauley calls Nate (Jon Voight) to get Van Zant’s address, at The Blue Room, 916 South San Fernando Road, Burbank, which you can see more of in Christopher Nolan's Memento.

When his relationship falls apart, Vincent Hanna moves into what was the Holiday Inn, now Hotel Angeleno, 170 North Church Lane, overlooking the freeway in Brentwood (Paul Giamatti drives past its circular tower at the beginning of Sideways).

The airport hotel at which Waingro finally gets his dues is the Hilton Los Angeles Airport, 5711 West Century Boulevard, and (in the days before airport security became such a big issue) it’s on the runways of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles International Airport, that the final shoot-out is staged.

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