‘Heat 2’ Review: Michael Mann Delivers More UltraCops, Gutter Poetry & Fetishistic Nitty-Grittiness
In the year 2000, the late literary critic Robin Wood put forth the concept of “hysterical realism,” a then-emergent micro-genre in which the delirious overstimulation of modern life is expressed through a hoarder-caliber accumulation of detail. At the time, he was talking about the likes of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith, and their doorstopper works’ endless minutiae on land surveying or tennis strategy or the ethics of lab rat usage.