Could Heat 2 Be the Part Stephen Graham's Entire Career Has Been Leading To?

Stephen Graham, who has been officially confirmed for the cast of Michael Mann's Heat 2, isn't exactly a stranger to Hollywood, but it's about time he landed a big ol' lead in keeping with his big ol' talent. Sure, there was his killer turn in The Irishman, where he briefly upstaged Pacino and De Niro (not entirely thanks to his jazzy Hawaiian shirt, but it played its gaudy part); he has also done his time in the franchise trenches, popping up in Pirates of the Caribbean and the latter two Venom movies. Here finally comes the big one, though: Mann's long-awaited follow-up to the GOAT of heist films, famously one of the only other movies to put Pacino and De Niro toe-to-toe. And if the long-standing rumors are to be believed, he'll be stepping into the latter's shoes in Heat 2, playing a younger Neil McCauley, the conniving bank robber obsessively pursued by Pacino's LAPD detective Vincent Hanna.To state the obvious, Graham is clearly an able De Niro successor. They share a few traits, beyond being really, really good: a rugged, masculine intensity; piercing eyes; and an insane range of expression. (You just know that Graham would kill a Bobby impression. We'd bet good money that it's his private party trick.) Late-stage De Niro—ie. Dirty Grandpa De Niro, Alto Knights De Niro, pretty much every De Niro variant outside of his recent Scorsese team-ups—is not the immediate “you've gotta watch this” draw he was in his heyday. But that is a reputation that Graham has steadily built amid his post-Adolescence ascent. Basically, he makes pretty much anything he's in better. With his hefty silverback shoulders and those gravelly Liverpudlian tones, he's a not-so-secret weapon that brings film and TV up a notch.On reflection, it took me longer than I'd like to admit to notice. He'd obviously put in great turns in the likes of The Damned United, Gangs of New York and his 2006 breakout, This is England. His Irishman cameo was the talk of Twitter in 2019, bouncing onto screen with cartoonish gangster swagger. But my personal “Oh, shit, this guy!” moment didn't come until Boiling Point, where he commands the camera—shot in a single take, by the same guy who would go on to direct Adolescence—through a red-hot, frenetic hour-and-a-half's worth of service in a fictional London restaurant, playing a hardened, drug addicted chef whose kitchen rapidly falls into chaos. It's a mesmerizing performance, bubbling with the same intensity he'd later bring to the Netflix mega-hit.It seems the rest of the world has also finally taken note. His career has snowballed: playing The Boss's dad in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, a mercurial boxer in A Thousand Blows. Soon, a gnarly serial killer in Apple's Nocturne. And now—the lead in fuckin' Heat 2. People online have made the point that he's around the same age that De Niro was in the original, which seems a bit odd if he's indeed playing McCauley as a younger man. Counterpoint: if you can get Stephen Graham, who the hell cares? Make-up does wonders, as does a little CGI. Roles are yet to be confirmed, anyway, so maybe he'll play someone else entirely. But if the rumors are true, it'll be Stephen Graham versus Christian Bale, who is meant to be taking on Pacino's Hanna, per film blog chatter. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio is said to be taking over as Val Kilmer's Chris Shiherlis. Talk about an actor's Mount Rushmore. And it's a place Graham more than deserves.This story originally appeared in British GQ.