Tag Archives: Arthur Malet

Film Review: City Heat (dir by Richard Benjamin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1984’s City Heat, Clint Eastwood plays Lt. Speer, a tough and taciturn policeman who carries a big gun, throws a mean punch, and only speaks when he absolutely has to.

Burt Reynolds plays Mike Murphy, a private investigator who has a mustache, a wealthy girlfriend (Madeleine Kahn), and a habit of turning everything into a joke.

Together, they solve crimes!

I’m not being sarcastic here.  The two of them actually do team up to solve a crime, despite having a not quite friendly relationship.  (Speer has never forgiven Murphy for quitting the force and Murphy has never forgiven Speer for being better at everything than Murphy is.)  That said, I would be hard-pressed to give you the exact details of the crime.  City Heat has a plot that can be difficult to follow, not because it’s complicated but because the film itself is so poorly paced and edited that the viewer’s mind tends to wander.  The main impression that I came away with is that Speer and Murphy like to beat people up.  In theory, there’s nothing wrong with that.  Eastwood is legendary tough guy.  Most people who watch an Eastwood film do so because they’re looking forward to him putting the bad guys in their place, whether it’s with a gun, his fists, or a devastating one-liner.  Reynolds also played a lot of tough characters, though they tended to be more verbose than Eastwood’s.

That said, the violence in City Heat really does get repetitive.  There’s only so many times you can watch Clint punching Burt while various extras get gunned down in the background before it starts to feel a little bit boring.  The fact that the film tries to sell itself as a comedy while gleefully mowing down the majority of the supporting cast doesn’t help.  Eastwood snarls like a pro and Reynolds flashes his devil-may-care smile but, meanwhile, Richard Roundtree is getting tossed out a window, Irene Cara is getting hit by a car, and both Kahn and Jane Alexander are being taken hostage.  Tonally, the film is all over the place.  Director Richard Benjamin was a last-minute replacement for Blake Edwards and he directs without any sort of clear vision of just what exactly this film is supposed to be.

On the plus side, City Heat takes place in Kansas City in 1933 and the production design and the majority of the costumes are gorgeous.  (Unfortunately, the film itself is often so underlit that you may have to strain your eyes to really appreciate it.)  And the film also features two fine character actors, Rip Torn and Tony Lo Bianco, are the main villains.  For that matter, Robert Davi shows up as a low-level gangster and he brings an actual sense of menace to his character.  There are some good things about City Heat but overall, the film is just too messy and the script is a bit too glib for its own good.

Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood had apparently been friends since the early days of their careers.  This was the only film that they made together.  Interestingly enough, Reynolds gets the majority of the screentime.  Eastwood may be top-billed but his role really is a supporting one.  Unfortunately, Reynolds seems to be kind of bored with the whole thing.  As for Clint, he snarls with the best of them but the film really doesn’t give him much to do.

A disappointing film, City Heat.  Watching a film like this, it’s easy to see why Eastwood ended up directing himself in the majority of his films.

Dick Tracy (1990, directed by Warren Beatty)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1937 and “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino) and his gang of flamboyant and often disfigured criminals are trying to take over the rackets.  Standing in their way is ace detective Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty), the yellow trench-wearing defender of the law.  Tracy is not only looking to take down Caprice but he and Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly) are currently the guardians of The Kid (Charlie Korsmo), a young street kid who witnessed one of Caprice’s worst crimes.  Tracy’s investigation leads him through a rogue’s gallery of criminals and also involves Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), who has witnessed many of Caprice’s crimes but who also wants to steal Tracy’s heart from Tess.

Based on the long-running comic strip, Dick Tracy was a labor of love on the part of Warren Beatty.  Not only starring but also directing, Tracy made a film that stayed true to the look and the feel of the original comic strip (the film’s visual palette was limited to just seven colors) while also including an all-star cast the featured Madonna is an attempt to appeal to a younger audience who had probably never even heard of Dick Tracy.  When Dick Tracy was released, the majority of the publicity centered around Madonna’s participation in the film and the fact that she was dating Beatty at the time.  Madonna is actually probably the weakest element of the film.  More of a personality than an actress, Madonna is always Madonna no matter who she is playing and, in a film full of famous actors managing to be convincing as the members of Dick Tracy’s rogue gallery, Madonna feels out of place.  Michelle Pfeiffer would have been the ideal Breathless Mahoney.

It doesn’t matter, though, because the rest of the film is great.  It’s one of the few comic book films of the 90s to really hold up, mostly due to Beatty’s obvious enthusiasm for the material and the performances of everyone in the supporting cast who was not named Madonna.  Al Pacino received an Oscar nomination for playing Big Boy Caprice but equally good are Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles, William Forsythe as Flaptop, R.G. Armstong as Pruneface, and Henry Silva as Influence.  These actors all create memorable characters, even while acting under a ton of very convincing makeup.  I also liked Dick Van Dyke as the corrupt District Attorney.  Beatty knew audience would be shocked to see Van Dyke not playing a hero and both he and Van Dyke play it up for all its worth.  Beatty embraces the comic strip’s campiness while still remaining respectful to its style and the combination of Danny Elfman’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s songs provide just the right score for Dick Tracy’s adventures.  The film can be surprisingly violent at times but the same was often said about the Dick Tracy comic strip.  It wasn’t two-way wrist radios and trips to the Moon.  Dick Tracy also dealt with the most ruthless and bloodthirsty gangsters his city had to offer.

Dick Tracy was considered to be a box office disappointment when it was originally released.  (Again, you have to wonder if Beatty overestimated how many fans Dick Tracy had in 1990.)  But it holds up well and is still more entertaining than several of the more recent comic book movies that have been released.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: In the Heat of the Night (dir by Norman Jewison)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1967 film, In the Heat of the Night, tells the story of two very different men.

Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) is the police chief of the small town of Sparta, Mississippi.  In many ways, Gillespie appears to the epitome of the bigoted Southern cop.  He’s overweight.  He loses his temper easily.  He chews a lot of gum.  He knows everyone in town and automatically distrusts anyone who he hasn’t seen before, especially if that person happens to be a black man or from the north.

Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is a black man from the north.  He’s a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department and he’s as cool and controlled as Gillespie is temperamental and uncouth.  Tibbs has no patience for the casual racism that is epitomized by lawmen like Chief Gillespie.  When Gillespie says that Virgil is a “fancy name” for a black and asks what people call Virgil in Philadelphia, Virgil declares, “They call me Mister Tibbs!,” with an authority that leaves no doubt that he expects Gillespie to do the same.

Together …. THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

For once, that old joke is correct.  When a Chicago industrialist named Phillip Colbert is discover murdered in Sparta, Chief Gillespie heads up the investigation and, assuming that the murderer must be an outsider, orders Deputy Wood (Warren Oates) to check out the train station for any suspicious characters.  When Wood arrives at the station, he discovers Virgil standing on the platform.  Virgil is simply waiting for his train so that he can get back home to Philadelphia.  However, Wood promptly arrests him.  Gilespie accuses him of murdering Colbert, just to discover that Virgil’s a police detective from Philadelphia.

Though neither wants to work with the other, that’s exactly what Gillespie and Virgil are forced to do as they investigate Colbert’s murder.  Colbert was planning on building a factory in Sparta and his wife (Lee Grant) makes it clear that, if Sparta wants the factory and the money that comes with it, Virgil must be kept on the case.  Over the course of the investigation, Gillespie and Virgil come to a weary understanding as both of them are forced to confront their own preconceived notions about both the murder and life in Sparta.  In the end, if it’s impossible for them to truly become friends, they do develop a weary respect for each other.  That is perhaps the best that one could have hoped for in 1967.

I have to admit that it took me a few viewings before I really appreciated In the Heat of the Night.  Though this film won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1967, it’s always suffered when compared to some of the films that it beat.  One can certainly see that the film was superior to Doctor Dolittle and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.  But was it a better film than The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde?  Did Rod Steiger really deserve to win Best Actor over Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty?  (Amazingly, Poitier wasn’t even nominated.)

To be honest, I still feel that In The Heat of the Night was probably the 3rd best of the 5 films nominated that year, superior to the condescending Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner but nowhere near as groundbreaking as Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate.  The first time I watched In the Heat of the Night, I thought Steiger blustered a bit too much and the film’s central mystery didn’t really hold together and, to a large extent, I still feel like that.

But, at the same time, there’s a lot to appreciate about In the Heat of the Night.  On subsequent viewings, I came to better appreciate the way that director Norman Jewison, editor Hal Ashby, and cinematographer Haskwell Wexler created and maintained an atmosphere that was so thick that you can literally feel the Mississippi humidity while watching the film.  I came to appreciate the supporting cast, especially Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Scott Wilson, Anthony James, and Larry Gates.  (Gates especially makes an impression in his one scene, playing an outwardly genteel racist who nearly cries when Tibbs reacts to his slap by slapping him back.)  I also came to appreciate the fact that, while the white cop/black cop partnership has subsequently become a bit of a cliche, it was new and even controversial concept in 1967.

And finally, I came to better appreciate Sidney Poitier’s performance as Virgil.  Poitier underplays Virgil, giving a performance of tightly controlled rage.  While Steiger yells his way through the film, Poitier emphasizes that Virgil is always thinking.  As in the same year’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Poitier plays a dignified character but, here, that dignity is Virgil’s way of defying the demands and expectations of men like Gillespie.  When Virgil does strike back, it’s a cathartic moment because we understand how many times he’s had to hold back.

In the Heat of the Night may not have been the best film of 1967 but it’s still one worth watching.