City Heat
This project, much anticipated back in 1984, marked the first (and only) team-up between the two biggest movie stars in the world at that time, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. And while there are several ways the film could have been MUCH better, one canât fault the two lead performances. Clint and Burt play off each other very well, and their antagonistic chemistry results in some nifty dialogue exchanges and constant threats to each other to step outside and âsettle itâ. The movie does make the somewhat wrongheaded ploy to have them spoof their macho screen images though, with Clint playing his usual silent badass enforcer type while Burt plays a guy who relies more on his wits to survive. The premise sees them cast as former police partners, with the tension arising from when Burt turned in his badge and became a private eye, while Clint became a top lieutenant who disapproves of his former best friend associating with lowlifes and criminals as part of his job description. When Reynoldsâ detective partner (Richard âShaftâ Roundtree) is murdered by gangsters, they reluctantly team up to bring the bad guys down. Much of their interplay involves Reynolds getting into a messy situation and looking to Eastwood for help, only to get laughed off by Clint until he gets âinconveniencedâ (bumped into, windshield shot out, etc.), so that Eastwood goes into âangry modeâ and whips a little ass. The film would have been well-served to have had a more competent director for this material than the shoddy work we get from journeyman former actor Richard Benjamin, as even though he gets the look right for Prohibition-era Kansas City, he seems a bit out of his league when it comes to the action sequences, in particular two of the sloppiest shot and edited shootout scenes in movie history. Also, outside from the two starâs banter, the script by original directorial choice Blake Edwards is surprisingly uneven, with some bad dialogue for the supporting cast and a constant tonal shift between comedy and crime drama that never allows the story to get its footing. We do get two fine female supporting turns from Jane Alexander and Madeline Kahn as Clint and Burtâs romantic interests, but then there is the poor job done with the gangster villains, starting with Rip Torn, who obviously was given nothing to work with for his role, and chose to play his bad guy in a corny, cartoon character fashion, talking in a fake, tough guy brogue and always munching on a cigar with a sneer on his face. Likewise, Tony Lo Bianco as his rival adopts the traditional route of your cookie-cutter, wealthy crime lord type, and any sense of menace or urgency gets sucked out of the film. Irene Cara as the nightclub singer who witnesses a murder is nice to look at, but alas, she too is brought down by some inane dialogue as well. Itâs interesting to see some good casting in the roles of the secondary henchmen thugs, including Nicholas Worth, Robert Davi, and William Sanderson, but the saddest thing about the venture concerns the shooting of the opening fight scene (which oddly was also the first thing shot during production): Reynolds suffered a broken jaw when he was hit by a chair, and spent the rest of the shoot in a daze from painkillers and also was reportedly burdened by depression as well (and was seemingly never the same again careerwise), which is probably why Eastwood comes across as the âtougher guyâ of the two throughout the film, right up to the open-ended final scene where itâs hinted that they will FINALLY settle their differences. Overall, a fairly disappointing venture thatâs best enjoyed by hardcore fans of the two legendsâŚ
5/10