fees707
As soon as Arnie's butt makes an appearance, this standard buddy-cop flic takes off. I say standard, but I mean it lovingly here; the beats of the 80's actioners are hit with an unerring regularity that satiates this little ol' 80's heart o mine. Everything is solid in the solid hands of Walter "Solid" Hill. It's as sharp as Arnie's do, as chiseled as Arnie's chin and as tight as Arnie's butt.But...the great Jim Belushi experiment breaks down the stone foundations and it's then, and only then, that the cracks start to appear. Don't get me wrong, Jim's not that bad, it's just a kinda dull character played with only momentary sparks of enthusiasm.4 solid stars, 1 giant Austrian and 2 perfect butt cheeks.
jadavix
"Red Heat" has a great director and two actors ideally suited to its admittedly trite premise, but then takes forty four minutes to get it's nonsensical plot sorted out so that the premise can come to the forefront. After all that it really only has two memorable scenes: the weird bit at the beginning with a unisex Russian spa and Arnie grabbing a burning rock before punching someone, and a bit right at the very end where Arnie and Belushi go after the villain - a perfectly cast Ed O'Ross - in a bus.These were the only bits that showed be something different, and interesting.Aside from that it's the typical mismatched buddy cop movie, with two guys who hate each other at first and then learn to appreciate each other.But it didn't have to take so long to get there. The plot holds us up and needlessly complicates things with something about a key that opens a locker and someone with half a hundred dollar note. You know this stuff isn't really important; it's about the action and the chemistry between our two heroes.You get the latter more than the former.
Anssi Vartiainen
Red Heat, starring Arnold "Sir Accents-a-lot" Schwarzenegger, is a peculiar film on many levels. Released just a year before the fall of the Soviet Union, it stars a famous American actor with Austrian origins as a tough Russian cop traveling to USA in order to fetch a Soviet criminal that has escaped there. Just, think about that for a moment. Arnold as a Soviet cop, trying to do a Russian accent. If that doesn't sell the movie to you, nothing will.But, does it work? Well, in a word, yes. It follows the usual Schwarzenegger formula in that there's a lot of action, one-liners, muscular men going mano-a-mano, cheesy 80s music and wanton destruction of civic property. It's not the best movie Arnold has ever done, but it is a good example of his typical ware.The side characters are also a lot of fun, and I do like that the script paints Arnold as a good guy, making this one of the few Cold War era Hollywood films where the main actor is both a Soviet and the good guy. There's no snark aimed at his nation. There are of course jokes about him being from the Soviet Union, but just as many jokes are played at the expense of the Americans, and they're never mean-spirited or trying to put the two nations against one another.All in all Red Heat is a classic 80s action film with some surprising elements that elevate it above its peers. Worth a watch for all action fans.
BA_Harrison
Tough Russian cop Captain Ivan Danko (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent to America to capture Georgian criminal Viktor Rostavili (Ed O'Ross), who is in Chicago master-minding a massive international drugs operation. Unaccustomed to U.S. police procedure, the fish-out-of-water cop employs no-nonsense, Soviet-style law enforcement to get his job done, much to the dismay of brash American detective Art Ridzik (James Belushi), with whom he has been partnered.The problem with this film is that it doesn't live up to its title: instead of a red hot action flick that burns up the screen with intense ballistic gunfights and spectacular scenes of destruction and chaos, we get a rather tepid buddy cop movie, heavy on the humour and frustratingly light on the carnage. This mightn't have been so bad if the comedy had worked well, or if there had at least been some kind of chemistry between the leads, but the predictable script rarely delivers decent laughs and James Belushi makes for an uncharismatic foil to Arnie's efficient, stoic bad-ass.When the action does kick in, it's all too brief and staged with surprisingly little style or imagination by director Walter Hill. The film's closing action scene, which sees Danko and Viktor careering through Chicago in buses, lacks the much needed wow factor, feeling more like a routine mid-film moment rather than a satisfyingly climactic finalé. All told, Red Heat is far from Arnie's best and not a patch on Lethal Weapon, the previous year's buddy cop blockbuster.
AD
