Rated 4.3 out of 5, it's one of the best action films of the 90s... And yet this great classic almost had 45 minutes cut!

In a lengthy interview with FOX Home Entertainment in 2016, Michael Mann made a stunning revelation: the bigwigs at Warner wanted to flip a coin to determine the length of his masterpiece Heat... without even having seen it.

Heat is more than just a simple crime thriller. It’s a true story enriched by a long and amusing gestation. Michael Mann began writing the screenplay in 1979 after hearing his friend and former cop, Chuck Adamson, talk about the quest he undertook in the 60s to track down the robber Neil McCauley. The story eventually landed in the hands of NBC, which intended to turn it into a series. Unfortunately, this project did not come to fruition, and viewers only got to see the pilot, the TV movie L. A. Takedown in 1989.

But Mann was frustrated. He hadn’t given his idea the scope it deserved. Six years later, he picked up the thread and directed Heat. Featuring fabulous actors, including, of course, the duo Al Pacino / Robert De Niro, this monumental crime thriller is considered by many to be Mann's greatest film; in any case, one of the major films of the 1990s, with its shootout scene entering the pantheon of the 7th Art.

The Fate of a Masterpiece Decided by Coin Flip

And to think that its fate almost came down to a coin flip... literally. This is what Mann revealed in a lengthy interview with FOX Home Entertainment in 2016, as the film was being re-released in a restored version and especially in its director's cut.

When Michael Mann finished the final cut of Heat, the film ran for 2 hours and 45 minutes. An almost unprecedented length for a contemporary crime thriller. When he submitted it to Warner Bros, the executives had already decided it was too long before even seeing it.

"Regarding the length, I had a really interesting meeting with Bob Daly and Terry Semel at Warner Bros when I made the film. They later told me that they had flipped a coin to decide who should ask me to cut 45 minutes from the film — and that was before they had even seen it. Then we all went to the big screening at Warner Bros, and at the end, they stood up and said: 'Well, I think we have a two-hour and 45-minute film here.'

Sometimes, the fate of a film hangs by a thread... One can hardly imagine the massacre that would have resulted from this 45-minute cut version.