Best Seller

Cliché-ridden cop-and-criminal-are-just-two-faces-of-the-same-coin type of movie: well it’s not particularly good, but, really, is HEAT (1995) anything more than an overblown and more expensive example of the same idea, and does Michael Mann’s celebrated but dull star-studded version really have anything to say that can’t be found in this film (and here, with at least a slight hint of quirky originality)? The most interesting thing about Larry Cohen’s screenplay is the desperation and fragility built into the character of the hit man (Mann would never allow the dour masculinity of his protagonists to be infected by any such signs of weakness or complexity), giving James Woods a chance to make some use of his prodigious talent, but for the most part the story is just too silly and the filmmaking just too pedestrian. Right at the end Seymour Cassel shows up in an uncredited minor role (“skip the insult, just get it over with”), which does have the unfortunate (or fortunate) consequence that one tends to spend the climactic scenes focused on the question of just how that came about. If one does manage to pay attention to the climax, then, yes, one can only conclude that Cohen was right to complain that the decision to have the daughter run towards the bad guy was nonsensical, but if he was of the belief that that’s what sunk an otherwise solid movie at the box office, then he was delusional.