Heat

Rating:
Summary: Reynolds at his best
Review: I'm not ashamed to tell you that I'm a big fan of Burt Reynolds. I'm also not ashamed to say that his 1986 film "Heat" is my all time favorite Burt Reynolds film. I like this movie better than "The Longest Yard," "Smokey and the Bandit," "Sharkey's Machine," and "Deliverance." Well, maybe I should remove "Deliverance" from consideration since it is more an ensemble piece than a Reynolds's vehicle. But you get the idea. I tend to enjoy his lower budget efforts from the early 1970s more than his "good old boy" stuff that made him so popular a few years later. Don't get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Hooper" just as much as the next kid at the time, but they ruined the former with a couple of amazingly lame sequels and never adequately publicized the latter. Then Reynolds sank like a stone in the mid to late 1980s, which meant that when he made "Heat" he was trying to keep his head above water. His resurgence after the success of "Boogie Nights" in the late 1990s still continues to this day. He's supposedly appearing in four or five films opening within the next year.

Reynolds plays Nick Scaliente in "Heat," an aging tough guy who has fallen on hard times in Las Vegas, Nevada. Once considered as an excellent recruit by the local mafia dons, Scaliente's compulsive gambling habits and anti-authoritarian attitude assured that the city's bone crushers would refuse to employ him. At the beginning of the film, we see how far this professional fighter has fallen in his efforts to earn a few bucks. A meek businessman wishing to impress his girlfriend hires Nick to pick a fight in a bar so the guy can "beat him senseless" in the parking lot, thus proving to his woman that he's tough enough to knock down a hulking guy like Scaliente. We later learn that Scaliente is willing to take any work he can find because he fervently wishes to leave Las Vegas forever in favor of a relaxing retirement in Venice, Italy. But life keeps getting in the way. While sitting in his office in a slummy part of Vegas, an office he shares with seedy lawyer Pinchus Zion (Howard Hesseman), a young computer mogul named Cyrus Kinnick (Peter MacNichol) turns up on the doorstep requesting Scaliente's services. Kinnick is a wimpy sort who wants Nick to teach him how to fight like a man, which Scaliente will eventually do in several hilarious scenes involving pushing, slapping, and punching.

In the meantime, Scaliente has a few other serious problems. Holly (Karen Young), a young harridan who happens to live next door to Nick, turns up one day asking for his assistance. The spoiled son of a big East Coast mafia don, Danny DeMarco (Neill Barry), roughed her up with the help of his beefy goons at a casino's hotel. Worse, they refused to pay her for her services. Nick at first refuses to get involved, but eventually comes around because he is at heart a decent fellow who won't let a friend suffer no matter what they do for a living. He goes to the casino posing as Holly's boss and kicks some serious you know what, slashing one guy's throat with a credit card and breaking bones with the greatest of ease. Unfortunately, Nick didn't know exactly whom he was dealing with when Holly asked him to intervene. DeMarco runs to Baby (Joseph Mascolo), the biggest mafia don in the city, and demands that Scaliente die for his intervention. Nick narrowly escapes doom when he proves that DeMarco is lying about the specific details of the violent encounter, but he knows that Danny isn't the sort of guy to forget a wrong. Sure enough, DeMarco guns for Scaliente in a conclusion that sees Reynolds's character using a piece of rebar as a spear, dumping bricks on someone's head, and kicking out an electric light to set a guy on fire. Oh yeah!

"Heat" should have received more attention from filmgoers and critics than it ultimately did. None other than William Goldman wrote the script, and Reynolds gives what is probably his best performance as the problem addled Scaliente. There's a great scene in the film where Nick and Cyrus go to a casino for a little fun at the tables that reveals all too clearly the sort of addiction plaguing Scaliente's life. Reynolds's dialogue with the card dealer Cassie (Diana Scarwid), and her reaction to his failure to win big when he's ahead, is worth watching repeatedly. So is Scaliente's open admission to Cyrus that he does indeed have a gambling problem. Even more to the film's credit is its unflinching portrayal of the flipside of Las Vegas. Most of the film takes place in run down sections of the town, which, if not exactly representative of the entire city, does show that it's not all flashy lights and glitzy hotels.

As much as I liked the film, it does have its problems. First, the scene where Reynolds goes on a rampage in DeMarco's hotel room is extraordinary for its poor editing. Why this action sequence ultimately tanks while the final showdown between Nick and Danny works so well is a mystery for the ages. Second, the plot is hardly original. We've seen a tough guy helping out the weak in a million other films. Third, the DVD version of the film is so poorly put together that it's infuriating. No extras and a fullscreen presentation were enough to make me want to pull my hair out. But in the end none of this matters. It's the performances that elevate this one to memorable status, and "Heat" is memorable for this Reynolds fan. I hope a better DVD comes out soon.