Review: City Heat

Set in 1933, Clint Eastwood stars as a surly Kansas City cop reluctantly teaming up with smart-arse detective Burt Reynolds to find out who killed Reynolds’ partner (Richard Roundtree). Tony Lo Bianco and Rip Torn play the city’s two big mobsters who are the likeliest suspects (there’s something about Roundtree having stolen a set of rather damning mob books), whilst Irene Cara plays a nightclub singer whom Roundtree was friendly with. Jane Alexander plays Reynolds’ faithful secretary, whilst Robert Davi and William Sanderson play a couple of goons. Madeline Kahn appears briefly as Reynolds’ shrill girlfriend who gets kidnapped.

I hope you guys like people being thrown through glass windows. Directed by Richard Benjamin (“My Favourite Year”, “Little Nikita”, “Mermaids”), and with a screenplay credited to the amusingly named Sam O. Brown (check the initials, in reality it’s an uncredited Blake “Pink Panther” Edwards), this 1984 critical flop is easily one of the worst films ever made. Incompetently and incoherently plotted, and featuring way too many characters to keep track of (Robert Davi plays a goon whose boss I’m still not quite sure of), and it’s all disastrously unfunny. The only laughs in the entire picture come from Groucho Marx seen on screen in a movie theatre. And I don’t even like Groucho Marx! That’s pretty damning if you ask me.

The insult-based comedy banter between Eastwood and Reynolds is truly unbearable. Their performances are shocking here. Stone-faced Eastwood looks like he’d rather be anywhere else (he clearly resents his own participation in this film for every second of it) and is seemingly doing Sterling Hayden doing an Eastwood impersonation. Reynolds (I guess playing a Humphrey Bogart-type) is his usual punchable, smug self, completely fatuous. He’s also as mumbly as ever, but good luck understanding any of his dialogue when he’s got a cigarette in his mouth. You know you’re in trouble when one of your protagonists is a surly, stone-faced guy who hates everyone and everything, and the other is a brutish schmuck who is his own number one fan. Maybe that’s why Eastwood is so grumpy, he was resisting the urge to knock Burt on his glib arse (Apparently Reynolds had his jaw broken on set via an accident. An accidental punch to the face, perhaps?). Or maybe he was just seriously hungover. I wouldn’t blame him for going to the bottle, this film is the pits. Then again, so was “Tightrope”, another Eastwood flick released in 1984, clearly not a good year for him.

You’ve heard of “Bonfire of the Vanities”? Then call this “Inferno of the Egos”. It was a troubled production, with Edwards set to write and direct but fired in pre-production for creative difference reasons that absolutely did not have anything to do with the fact that Edwards wanted to cast his wife Julie Andrews in one of the female leads, and Reynolds wasn’t a fan after having previously worked with her. Nope that couldn’t be it at all. So Edwards was replaced, Madeline Kahn plays the role Julie Andrews was supposed to play, and Edwards’ screenplay was re-written by Joseph Stinson (who wrote Eastwood’s “Sudden Impact” the year before). Apparently Eastwood and Reynolds produced the film as well.

Look the production design is handsome, but so what? Did that save “Harlem Nights” or “Sunset” from being turds? Hell no. The exterior shots are well-lit by Nick McLean, but the interior shots are way, way too dark, even for a noirish film. The supporting cast is huge, but a mixed bag. Super-smooth Richard Roundtree comes off best, he really tries hard, and the film ought to have been about his character. It’s a shame Hollywood ended up somewhat neglecting actors like him and Pam Grier after the blaxploitation boom died out, because they were always most professional. Then again, perhaps Roundtree was just happy that the role wasn’t taken by someone like Cleavon Little. And hey, he at least gets to be the best-dressed person in the film, so there’s that. Singer Irene Cara (of “Fame” and “Flashdance” chart-topping infamy) will never be confused for Meryl Streep, but she’s cast as a nightclub singer here and is very well-used. She’s certainly competent enough to make one wonder why acting was such a brief venture for her. Madeline Kahn is perfectly cast, but underused, and whilst I love Rip Torn, this film is way beneath his talents. The same goes for Jane Alexander and character actor John Hancock. Alexander is cast in the secretary/assistant role to Reynolds’ private dick, but unfortunately the role isn’t as well-written as those from the 40s. Hancock, meanwhile, looks like he’d be a whole helluva lot of fun in this if anyone cared to make his role worth a damn. I like William Sanderson, but why on Earth is an Italian mobster hiring a redneck yokel as his Gunsel? That was weird. Tony Lo Bianco is a disappointing presence as the film’s other Mafioso. He’s not an awful actor, but this is the guy you cast to play a crook on “Columbo” or “The Rockford Files”. He’s pretty low-rent and not at all intimidating.

This film is just awful. It’s not interesting, it’s not funny, most of the cast is wasted, the two leads suck, and the plot will lose you almost instantaneously. An absolute shocker.

Rating: F