Red Heat
Red Heat
Directed by:
Walter HillCinematography:
Matthew F. LeonettiComposer:
James HornerCast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Belushi, Peter Boyle, Ed O'Ross, Laurence Fishburne, Gina Gershon, Richard Bright, Brent Jennings, Saveliy Kramarov (more)Plots(1)
Moscow policeman Captain Ivan 'Iron Jaws' Danko (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is on the trail of Georgian drug dealer Viktor Rostavili (Ed O'Ross) in Chicago when he is ambushed by the dealer's gang. When Rostavili makes his escape, an American cop is killed. Danko teams up with the dead cop's partner, Detective Art Ridzik (James Belushi), in a bid to complete his mission, but the resulting culture clash between East and West causes various hilarious problems. (StudioCanal UK)
(more)Reviews (7)
I be in sauna. I go to West. In West different ideologia. It evil. My good. My Western partner bad. I slap some. My Western partner not so bad. I drive bus. I get watch. My Western partner not at all bad. He good man like me. I must fly home now. I at in good Commie movie, it good in my filmographia. I very satisfactory.
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The older the movie, the better it is. Nowadays, it's hard to find such a picture. Corpses are piled on top of each other and everyone is vulgar. Just the good old '80s. Schwarzenegger (in top form) is a classic Soviet "robot"" and James Belushi is a classic incompetent American cop. So there's no shortage of entertaining situations or action. I don't think anyone's ever going to shoot a bus chase like that again. Oh my, I was transported back to my childhood. By the way, did anyone notice János Bán’s "Otík" from My Sweet Little Village? :-)
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A surprisingly funny and dynamic probe into Russian police practices. This time, it's the Americans who are incapable and the Russians are here to help, unusual roles that I wouldn't expect from Walter Hill. And the promising premise develops quite well. The screenplay is, of course, quite simple and not much happens in the film, but the wisecracks are brilliant and the duo of two such different policemen has a lot of charm. Additionally, Arnold in a Russian uniform, with plenty of one-liners and his unmistakable stiffness are simply and purely genius. The action is surprisingly skillfully shot and doesn't lack the necessary edge and speed. The typical craziness of the 1980s craziness (hairstyles, tough talk, unintentionally cheesy machismo) bothered me a bit at times, but it can be survived.
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"Who is Dirty Harry?" A straightforward classic action film, nothing more, nothing less. In the original version with subtitles, but much more likable and without the atmosphere of a cheap B-movie, which our dubbing attributes to it and with which I (unfortunately) remembered. There are many memorable scenes in the film (the Moscow opening!) and Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi complement each other perfectly. The bloody dynamic action performed by Walter Hill cannot be faulted at all.
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Arnold is excellent again, he doesn't overact unnecessarily and with his motherfucker expression he easily outshines everything between Moscow and Chicago. His capitalist sidekick Belushi, though he gains some sympathy with his performance, feels as if he was there only to make Arnold's iconicity more visible. Story-wise, it’s one of those mediocre 80's B-movies that, apart from the pile of dead and maimed, is interesting mainly because the cold and principled Soviet is played by the embodiment of the modern American dream – but thank God for that... 60%
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Arnold Schwarzenegger's role as a zealous Soviet cop fits him perfectly and his interaction with the capitalist world of his partner Jim Belushi supplies the movie with a fairly decent dose of sarcasm and irreverent humour, otherwise, it is a relatively respectable B-movie with an ordinary plot about the hunt for a gruff drug dealer in which this time East and West join forces. In addition, Morpheus from The Matrix and Otík from My Sweet Little Village appear in supporting roles, so what else could a Czech movie-goer want more?
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In the late 1980s, Arnie (like Sly in Tango & Cash) tried to break into comedy with a buddy cop film that not many people remember today, because it was eventually overshadowed by his other comedy, Twins, from the same year. Red Heat was directed by Walter Hill, so it's not surprising that the humour combines with brutal violence and raw atmosphere. Sentimentality is kept to a minimum, so there’s not much of a bromance, a typical element of the subgenre. A few years earlier, Hill had basically kick-started a wave of buddy cop comedies with 48 Hours. Red Heat, however, is the first and perhaps only buddy cop film to bring together an American and a Soviet. It's a sort of cross between Lethal Weapon and Rocky IV, reflecting the then-loosening relations between the US and the Soviet Union. The Soviets are no longer seen as enemies, but as someone with whom Americans can join forces against a common enemy (international drug smugglers). The American viewer could sympathize with the protagonist, who is something of a Soviet Dirty Harry, despite the fact that he ultimately did not defect and remained a proud Soviet patriot (unlike in Red Scorpion of the same year). Another virtue of Red Heat is that it is the first American film to be shot in the Red Square (albeit without the approval of the Soviet government). But it still portrays the Soviet Union in a caricatured way – the way Americans imagined it in the 1980s. So there is an enormous amount of hilariously silly stereotypes, which are served up to the audience with stony seriousness. And I can't help but think that's what makes the film so much fun. Something so grotesquely absurd would not be made today. Right from the start, we're deafened by Horner's hard-edged variation on Prokofiev's Cantata for the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution, which is underscored by shots of Soviet soldiers marching proudly through the Red Square and majestic cuts to statues of Lenin and Marx. The opening credits are appropriately stylized in Cyrillic (with the letter "R" reversed), although the Soviets in the film principally use the Latin alphabet when writing in Russian (WTF?). Arnold, who speaks a lot of Russian here, spouts memorable expressions such as "kapitalizm", "kchuligany" or "kokainum" (which have been the target of many musical remixes on YouTube). Fights between half-naked men in the snow, the ripping off of artificial legs full of cocaine and bus chases are then treated as the usual routine of ordinary Soviet cops. It's all crowned by the final shot of Arnold in a Soviet uniform, saluting for no reason in the middle of the Red Square. No wonder Russian audiences are said to regard Red Heat as a brilliant parody that leaves them dying in laughter. However, the harsher Soviet police practices ultimately win out in the film and prove more effective in fighting criminals than American bureaucratic practices. The humour here, of course, comes from the banter between the representatives of the two different superpowers. Ivan Danko (Schwarzenegger) is a disciplined, taciturn Soviet cop who doesn't understand English metaphors and reacts to everything with cold apathy, in short, a role where Arnold could apply his Terminator acting experience and his strong accent. Art Ridzik (Jim Belushi), on the other hand, is a sloppy, foul-mouthed American cop, fond of hamburgers and doughnuts – perhaps Jim Belushi's best role. And Ed O'Ross, is absolutely flawless as the slick bad guy. Of course, there's plenty of proper 80s action.
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