Review of Red Heat (1988) by David G — 19 Jul 2009

Could the universe really survive the coming together of two such enormous 80's staples - the Arnie action movie and the mismatched buddy movie? Well yeah because we're still here. And Red Heat really isn't all that great.

It's OK and all, certainly watchable, but the characters - with a few notable exceptions - are uninteresting and the plot is far too complicated - with an 80's Arnie flick you just want to chill out and have a laugh, not have your mind blown with a shit ton of characters and double and triple crosses all over the place.

Still, it does have it's moments such as the first five minutes that give us the wonderfully cheesy opening credits where all the R's are backwards (since, y'know the movie is Russian-themed and everything) and the bare-assed sauna punch up.

Arnie plays Soviet police Captain Ivan Danko and the character is OK - when he's blowing people away - but the rest of the time his stoicism and woodenness will probably send you to sleep. Presumably the character was intentionally played this way, after all even Arnie can act better than that, and perhaps it's a dig at the robotic, individuality-suppressing communist regime but you still want more out of your hero.

James Belushi does his familiar shouty, streetwise cop thing as Chicago detective Art Ridzik and again he's OK, together making an entertaining duo with Arnie, but his incessant bitching can grate after a while.

I prefer him in K-9. The best characters are the main villain Viktor Rostavili played by Ed O'Ross and prison gang leader Abdul Elijah played by Brent Jennings, the former an admittedly two-dimensional bad guy but nailing the intimidating, deep-voiced sleaziness and the latter a cool and intelligent cat with some great dialogue.