Recently, I enjoyed a retro-watch of a 1981 bank robbery movie called THIEF.

THIEF is written, directed and produced by virtuoso film-maker Michael Mann and is the precursor to what many consider his master work, another bank robbery movie he made 14 years later, called HEAT.

I’ve always had a dedicated love of the 1995 film HEAT. Watching THIEF brought all those feelings to the surface. I just knew I had to do something about it.

The result is a not-too-serious mini suburban noir I’ve titled NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH… AND LISTEN!

Hope you enjoy it and remember, as Tom Sizemore’s character in the movie memorably says… the action IS the juice!

Fergus Argyle didn’t just love Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece HEAT – he lived it. He’d been known to wear charcoal suits, stare intensely at the ocean, and, most crucially, had installed a high-gain microphone in the drywall shared with his neighbor, Gary.

Gary, also a HEAT devotee, was a died-in-the-wool ‘Waingro apologist’, which Fergus found personally offensive. For three nights, Fergus sat in the dark, wearing heavy tactical headphones, waiting for the ‘score.’ He wasn’t looking for bank heist intel; he wanted to hear Gary’s leaked copy of the director’s recently-updated definitive commentary.

Suddenly, the signal hissed to life.

“The air’s raw tonight, Ralphie,” Gary’s voice crackled through the receiver. He was talking to his cavoodle. “Just like the lighting in the diner scene. Pure steel blue.”

Fergus leaned in, his heart hammering. In the movie, Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna listens to De Niro’s Neil McCauley drilling into a safe. Fergus adjusted his levels, feeling like a wild urban predator. He heard a metallic clink.

“He’s prepping the drill,” Fergus whispered, quoting the film. “Give me the room! Give me the room!”

Through the headphones, a low, rhythmic grinding started. Whirr. Scrape. Thud.

“Yes,” Fergus hissed. “The vault. The silicon carbide drill bit. It’s happening.”

Just then, the audio changed. It wasn’t the sound of a professional thief bypassing a security system. It was the sound of a man struggling with a cheap IKEA Allen key.

“This coffee table is a goddamn weak design, Ralphie!” Gary shouted. “The instructions are a lie! It looked so glamorous in the showroom, but now it’s just particle board and despair!”

Fergus frowned. This wasn’t the high-stakes surveillance he’d envisioned. He wanted the tension of the Far East National Bank job, not a middle-aged man wrestling with a side table.

Suddenly, a loud crack echoed through the wall.

“Slick!” Gary yelled, referencing the heist’s getaway driver. “I’ve snapped the mounting bracket! I’m down! I’m boxed in!”

Fergus couldn’t help himself. He grabbed his own microphone and keyed the frequency. “Son of a glitch! You’re acting like a cowboy, Gary! You want to be making moves on the street when you can’t even assemble a cheese ‘n crackers flat-pack?”

There was dead silence on the other end. Then, Gary’s voice came back, surprisingly friendly and, like his celluloid hero, unnervingly calm.

“Fergus? Is that you in the drywall? You’re doing the Hanna surveillance bit, aren’t you?”

“I… I have to leave in thirty seconds if I feel the heat around the corner,” Fergus stammered, committing to the bit.

“Ten degrees flat,” Gary replied, completing the quote. “Now come over here and help me lift this tabletop. It’s solid oak, and I think I may have pinned Ralphie.”

Fergus sighed, took off his headphones, and headed next door. His cover may have been blown, but the brotherhood of the cinephile remained.

This is an excerpt from one of HEAT‘s most well-known scenes, the restaurant meeting between Al Pacino’s character and Robert Deniro’s ‘Neil’ –

Now watch British actor Tom Hiddleston (‘Loki’ in Marvel’s THOR movies) do his absolute best impersonation of this scene…

This post has been brought to you by the new Harper Collins-published novel THE INFINITE SADNESS OF SMALL APPLIANCES.

Written by Canadian author Glenn Dixon and set in the near future, it tells the story of a sentient Roomba vacuum cleaning robot who sets out to save the humans in her house from a rising, evil technological power. Original, huh?