UNDERATED

In one very important way this movie beats HEAT hands down.
Heat has way way waaaay to many celebrities. This is a movie about a gang of ruthless but very low profile crooks who are unknown to everyone including the cops, and are suddenly exposed when they take aboard a less focused newcomer who can't control himself. In Heat, everyone in a named role is a celeb so instead of thinking "that guy is doing his best to kill the whole *beep* street" you think "Val didn't behave like this when he was Batman". You recognize everyone, and that breaks the invaluable movie asset "suspension of disbelief".
Heat is a good movie, but it would have been much better with only one big name actor and a bunch of good but less known actors in the main roles. It could have been one of those movies that launches half a dozen major stars. Instead it supplied half a dozen major stars with a movie that is not their best. ALL of them have made better films elsewhere. Like with LA Takedown, you get the feeling that everyone involved made this to keep food on the table. Heat just provided better actors with better food. If I had crewed Heat I would have used some expensive celeb as "Waingro" and let Michael Rooker play the gang leader. Rooker can play the focused professional very well indeed, and he deserves more attention than he is getting now. I can visualize him filling the leader part and adding more menace to it.
I love this film for many reasons, among them that is does not have lots of big explosions, helicopter chases, rampaging bad guys with stolen military lasers or other effects-instead-of-script gizmos. This had a limited budget, and thus stayed realistic. Most movies now figure that a major part of the audience has ADD and thus give you an explosion/shootout/sex scene every five minutes. I prefer my crooks (and scripts) to be professional, focused and discreet.

The scene where the crew lures the police to expose themselves is a classic. That scene, and the diner meeting, are in themselves so well made that they are worth five stars out of ten, and the rest of the movie just adds to that baseline. This movie has flaws and inconsistencies, but for viewing pleasure I gave it a nine and I have seen it at least ten times now. I gave Heat an eight, and I have seen it twice. LA Takedown stays on my "see once a year"-shelf. Heat rests peacefully on the library shelf.

I agree completely. I'm not normally one for 'what the *beep* is this score about?' type posts. But this should definitely be ranked higher.