Heat (1986)

	Directed by: Dick Richards Jerry Jameson	COUNTRY USA GENRE Action/Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Heat RUNNING TIME 101 minutes
	Produced by: Elliot Kastner Cassian Elwes
	Written by (based on his own novel): William Goldman

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Nick Escalante	Burt Reynolds
Holly	Karen Young
Cyrus Kinnick	Peter MacNicol
Pinchus Zion	Howard Hesseman	-
Danny DeMarco	Neill Barry	½
"Baby"	Joseph Mascolo	-
Cassie	Diana Scarwid

Review

If you balk at the somewhat bumpy shifts in tone and pacing of this supposedly serious Burt Reynolds flick, you can safely assume that at least some of it has to do with the many problems that were encountered during production, which led to the use of a total of five directors. None of those five are Robert Altman, who at some point was attached to direct but pulled out because he "detested the commerciality" of William Goldman’s script. As it ultimately turned out, Heat is a somewhat awkward watch and it never really gels, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bits and pieces of sheer quality scattered around here. Reynolds tries to go deeper into his character than he arguably had done in a while. And it is unusual – even a little eerie – to hardly see him smile. But despite his efforts, there is something lethargic about his performance. He may have gone for dejected and disillusioned, but his Nick Escalante feels more bored and disinterested. And next to Peter MacNicol’s much more contemporary, expressive acting – a performance which could have been really brilliant in another movie – Burt appears dated. The film does too, in many ways, with its crime drama aura and somewhat constricting spatiality. If the crime story upon which this is based felt fresh on paper, it no more than drags along here.