A Brief Breakdown of When Akira Appears in Heat
Honestly, this is S-Tier Parenting
For the majority of its 170 minutes, Heat is a movie about people who shouldn’t have kids. That was one the key takeaways I had this weekend after finally seeing one of my favorite movies on the big screen. Despite mostly everyone with kids being concerned with literally everything else but their kid, there is one great moment of movie parenting.
Charlene Shiherlis (a heartbreakingly good Ashley Judd) is doing her best to raise her son while his father, Chris (Val Kilmer) robs banks with his best friend (Robert De Niro). She spends the movie struggling to reconcile the love she has for Chris with the reality that he’s bad news for her and their son.
While her arc is mostly spent watching her dream of domestic bliss get further and further away from her, there’s one moment of peace where Charlene reveals herself to be a based ass mom. She’s feeding her son breakfast as Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 classic anime film, Akira, plays in the background.
Look, I’m not one to tell you how to raise your kids. That said, this is how you should be raising your kids.
Not teaching them valuable life lessons with Bluey, not teaching them the depths of a mother’s love with The Wild Robot, but putting them onto the stone, cold, classics off jump.
Sure, Disney films are heartwarming fun for the whole family with some solid moral lessons, but do they teach the horrors of war and capitalism with stunning visuals and grotesque body horror? Didn’t think so.
Maybe I’m a bit biased considering my childhood was predominantly spent watching R-rated movies at far too young an age. I watched Scream with my grandpa when I was five-years-old, so I never really had a chance. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was around 10 or 11 years old the first time I watched Akira.
I’m a firm believer that movies can be a safe way to confront the unpleasant truths of the world, and clearly so is Charlene. I mean, the kid’s dad’s a bank robber. What better way to prepare him for the fact there’s no happy ending to their story than with a visually stunning banger?
While Heat is mostly a movie about how not to rob a bank, it is, if ever so briefly, a shining example of how to raise a kid.