 Neil McCauley is a thief... an expert thief... one of the best. His philosophy in life - become attached to nothing in life that you can t walk away from in 30 seconds if you spot the "Heat" around the corner. His crew of criminals is a high-tech outfit pulling off professional jobs that impress even the likes of Detective Vincent Hanna. But Hanna, a man driven through life only by his work, becomes obsessed, at the expense of his private life, with bringing McCauley down. As McCauley s crew prepare for the score of a lifetime, and Hanna s team tries to bring him in, the two find that they are challenged by the greatest minds on the opposite side of the law that either one has ever encountered.