City Heat.

Review #2567: City Heat.

Cast: 

Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Speer), Burt Reynolds (Mike Murphy), Jane Alexander (Addy), Madeline Kahn (Caroline Howley), Rip Torn (Primo Pitt), Beau Starr (Pitt Lookout), Irene Cara (Ginny Lee), Richard Roundtree (Diehl Swift), Tony Lo Bianco (Leon Coll), William Sanderson (Lonnie Ash), Nicholas Worth (Troy Roker), Robert Davi (Nino), Art LaFleur ("Bruiser"), Arthur Malet (Doc Loomis), and Jack Nance (Aram Strossell) Directed by Richard Benjamin (#1024 - My Favorite Year)

Review: 

I have to admit, the key impetus to actually watching this movie was the fact that it was on a DVD pack, specifically a Clint Eastwood set (paired with Pink Cadillac, of all things). Sure, Eastwood is a curious presence, why not try a comedy? I didn't have enough time to see it back in 2024, but it sure seems time to actually watch what all the fuss is about. Blake Edwards penned the original story (once called "Kansas City Jazz") in the 1970s and it eventually found its way to Warner Bros. wanting to have Edwards direct Reynolds and Eastwood together (previously, Edwards directed Reynolds with The Man Who Loved Women [1983]) Somehow, Eastwood had disagreements over the script and his character and Edwards was soon replaced with Richard Benjamin; this was the second of two movies directed by Benjamin to come out in 1984 after Racing with the Moon. According to Reynolds, Eastwood was fine with Benjamin replacing Edwards while saying the dismissal "hurt [Eastwood] badly". Reynolds claimed that he knew the film was going down the tubes ten days into shooting because he saw his role as such: "playing Jack Lemmon in this strange film where people were getting blown away...The public wanted Boom Town or to see us in a contemporary film. They didn't want Dirty Harry vs. the Wimp." As a result of an accident (reported as either a metal chair to the face or falling from a chair and hitting his jaw), this was not a happy experience for Reynolds. As a result, Joseph C. Stinson was credited as a co-writer of the screenplay with "Samuel O. Brown" (get it? S...O...B.?). Expected to be a big hit with a budget of $25 million and released on the same week as Beverly Hills Cop and 2010 in December 1984, the movie made roughly $38 million as a considerable disappointment. Benjamin kept on as a director with films of extremely varied quality such as The Money Pit (1986), Mermaids (1990), and Marci X (2003).

This might be the most obvious case of seeing a movie and watching it die in real time. Sometimes it looks nice and sometimes it comes off as a comedy and sometimes it has some violence worth being in a buddy action movie...but it never comes off as a complete package. For such a "buddy movie", it just seems more like two short films that got cobbled together, with Reynolds seemingly having the more thankless job of trying to carry a film in doing silly lines and getting beat up a bit while Eastwood basically goes "nope" and "yep". Even being a sendup of the gangster movie isn't that fun because the movie just dawdles for 97 minutes with a blithering plot and little else to go which goes as such: two gangs want this briefcase of records but the guy who stole it ends up dead and a game of "where's the briefcase?" tangles up a cop and cop-turned-private eye into an alliance to not only avenge the dead man & his injured girl but also to rescue both of their would-be lovers (as you do) that ends up in both gangs getting plenty of bullets and fire in them. For such a star-studded cast, it's amazing to make a movie that just feels so small. Sometimes I chuckled, sometimes I rolled my eyes: it's the ultimate 6/10 movie, arguably.

The fact that the movie almost gets to a quality finish line is more of a testament to Reynolds than Eastwood, arguably. I've had a soft spot for Reynolds for a number of years because of the varying heights that came with such a fascinating movie star that I knew was going to make for a curious experience when watching a stinker such as, say, this movie or Stroker Ace (released in 1983 that has been cited as the starting point of his downturn as a star). He may have been approaching middle age with shaky ground in terms of public appearance of his charm (his next movie ended up being the misfire Stick [1985]), but I liked what I saw of him here in the same way that one admires the hokum of someone trying to retain the appearance of legitimacy and virility. This is basically important to at least giving the movie a shot (grinning in the face of mediocrity, an American tradition?), because Eastwood and his routine that comes off as dry with the bare minimum in trying to make a pair that might accidentally make you appreciate The Rookie (1990) in the future of mismatched duos. Eastwood looks like he wants to be anywhere else than here and being a "can take this corny crap in stride" is not a compliment. It also extends to Alexander and Kahn, who are each given thankless tasks to pair off the two male leads that goes nowhere in actual charm (Kahn basically vanishes for a good chunk of the film too, making it even harder, but at least she is paired with Reynolds in...trying to do something). Roundtree and Cara are needlessly given little to actually do (besides being hit by a car), and Alexander being on the bottom edge of the totem pole of "what do they actually do?" is less helpful when you wonder why Torn or Davi are just...there. Whether because of Benjamin or studio arrogance of going "Eastwood and Reynolds, what could go wrong for printing money?" or something else, they never come off as much of a team together. As a whole, City Heat came and went with audiences and hasn't exactly rocketed in reputation four decades later. Flawed as it may be, you could find something curious here. 

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Next up: A mystery...

*Truthfully, Reynolds was already on my mind for this month with, say, Rent-a-Cop or Striptease. 

The French Connection.

Review #1438: The French Connection.

Cast: 
Gene Hackman (Det. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle), Fernando Rey (Alain "Frog One" Charnier), Roy Scheider (Det. Buddy "Cloudy" Russo), Tony Lo Bianco (Salvatore "Sal" Boca), Marcel Bozzuffi (Pierre Nicoli), Frédéric de Pasquale (Henri Devereaux), and Bill Hickman (Bill Mulderig) Directed by William Friedkin (#037 - The Exorcist)

Review: 
"If you're going to make a film or an album of music or a painting, you cannot afford to stop and think what other people will think of it. You've got to take into consideration what your editor thinks, if, say, you're a writer. But I don't have anyone to answer to. I make a film because I want to. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they're not, but the way I think about my films is always very personal." - William Friedkin

"Acting was something I wanted to do since I was 10 and saw my first movie, I was so captured by the action guys. Jimmy Cagney was my favorite. Without realizing it, I could see he had tremendous timing and vitality." - Gene Hackman

All decades could be studied for their grittiness, but perhaps no decade had it more interesting than the 1970s. After a decade of shifting in Hollywood and within the culture, it only figures that some of the best films from this era would be ones with tinges of moral ambiguity and raw disenchantment of the angry young man, where law and order was a catchphrase rather than a show. Accordingly, it should only make sense that the first R-rated film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture would be The French Connection, based on the non-fiction book by Robin Moore released two years prior. Produced by 20th Century Fox, it featured the pursuit by two detectives (inspired by actual detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who both served as technical advisors in the film) of the New York Police Department of a substance smuggler in New York City. It should prove fitting that such a frank and urgent film came from a director with humble backgrounds in William Friedkin. The Chicago native was the son of a salesman and nurse that grew into becoming interested in films in his teenage years, viewing films such as Les Diaboliques, Psycho, and Citizen Kane (the last being the one to cement his love for the cinema). He went from working in the WGN-TV mail room to directing live TV shows and documentaries when he was 18, starting with The People vs. Paul Crump (1962). Incidentally, one documentary that Friedkin directed was The Thin Blue Line (1966), which focused on the police force and problems of combating increased crime. He started his feature film career with Good Times (1967), which featured Sonny and Cher in a comedy musical western. Of his first four films, only The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) proved any success with audiences or critics. And yet here he is, directing a film under the production of Philip D'Antoni, who had previously produced Bullitt (1968) for Fox only after several rejections and a small budget of $1.8 million dollars. There were a few follow-ups to this film of sorts. The Seven-Ups (1973) was directed by D'Antoni  while having Scheider as the main star as a tough-guy cop with Grosso as technical advisor and Bill Hickman back as stunt coordinator. French Connection II (1975) was a fictional sequel directed by John Frankenheimer that had Hackman and Rey return to their roles that was a mild success.

Of all the unlikely things, Hackman not being the first, second or even third choice must rank high up the list. Famed newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin was actually in the running at one point in time (he would lose out in light of his inability to drive), while Jackie Gleason was thought to be bad for box office with the failure of Gigot (1962), and Peter Boyle disapproved of the violent themes. Hackman, who was known for supporting roles such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and I Never Sang for My Father (1970) after going from the Pasadena Playhouse to doorman-between-acting, was found at the last moment. Similarly, Scheider had just a few small roles to his credit before this film (along with Klute) helped rise him to stardom. To have the actors get a feel for the cops they would portray, they patrolled with Egan and Grosso for a month. One can see that this proved effective in making for tremendous performances from Hackman and Scheider in how grizzled and hard-edged they prove for a film that serves as a key point for police procedural films for its era. Hackman proves especially great in showing the maniacal drive and act that one seems to need to have to be on the beat to take a criminal down on and off the clock with intensity, while Scheider follows along with measured conviction; probably the best sequence with the two is their first, with them chasing a criminal down the street that turns into questioning with offbeat fervor from Hackman ("Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?") in a Santa suit. Rey (who came into international status with collaborations with Orson Welles and Luis Bunuel films in the 1960s and 1970s) is elegantly devious to fit this cat-and-mouse game of cops and drug kingpins without trouble. Boca and the others (including Egan and Grosso in brief roles) fill in the gritted atmosphere of thrills and action fitting to be talked about as a neo noir. Perhaps having Shaft writer Ernest Tidyman behind this screenplay helps in making this 104-minute film really tick with tension and competence. It might seem quaint to the eyes of those who have encountered plenty of procedurals in the near half century since release, but one has to start somewhere with grimy gripping films like this. The chase sequence (which had a mix of Hackman and stunt driver Hickman driving) is excellent to see play out in real traffic between a car and a train with careful angles and a poster-worthy showdown moment to boot. By the time it gets to its bittersweet finale, one knows they have watched an interesting film with plenty of looks and sounds of New York City from an era long ago with documentary-style filming from Friedkin that serves the film well in driving one up the wall and never letting things go too easily. As a whole, This is a film with a controlled obsession of sordid realism that makes for a classic of the age that had people like Hackman and Friedkin deservingly reap the rewards of for the rest of the era.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.