city heat movie review

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Clint Eastwood (Lt. Speer) Burt Reynolds (Mike Murphy) Jane Alexander (Addy) Madeline Kahn (Caroline Howley) Rip Torn (Primo Pitt) Irene Cara (Ginny Lee) Richard Roundtree (Dehl Swift) Tony Lo Bianco (Leon Coll) William Sanderson (Lonnie Ash) Nicholas Worth (Troy Roker)

Richard Benjamin

Slick Private Investigator Mike Murphy (Burt Reynolds) and tough Police Lieutenant Speer (Clint Eastwood), once partners, now bitter enemies, reluctantly team up to investigate a murder.

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My year of flops case file #85 city heat.

There are films that belly-flop so spectacularly that the sight and sound of their failure can be detected from the …

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• Slick Private Investigator Mike Murphy ( Burt Reynolds ) and tough Police Lieutenant Speer ( Clint Eastwood ), once partners, now bitter enemies, reluctantly team up to investigate a murder.
• Kansas City in the 1930s: Private Investigator Mike Murphy's (Burt Reynolds') partner is brutally murdered when he tries to blackmail a mobster with his secret accounting records. When a rival gang boss goes after the missing records, ex-policeman Murphy is forced to team up again with his ex-partner Lieutenant Speer (Clint Eastwood), even though they can't stand each other, to fight both gangs before Kansas City erupts in a mob war. — Tom Zoerner <[email protected]>
• Kansas City 1933.Prohibition and the mobsters rule the streets.The number one crime boss is Leon Coll (Tony Lo Bianco),but Primo Pitt (Rip Torn) is determined to be top dog.One night at a cafe,Police Lieutenant Speer (Clint Eastwood) encounters his ex-partner turned Private eye Mike Murphy (Burt Reynolds) who gets into a fight with a pair of thugs.Speer's heard rumours about some dodgy dealings going on around at Murphy's agency and is convinced that the punch up had something to do with it.The next day at his office,Murphy's secetary Addy (Jane Alexander) who he and Speer have both always liked (and is possibly the reason for their feud) tells Murphy that the two thugs were in fact Repo guys.Murphy's partner Dehl Swift (Richard Roundtree) arrives flashing his money around,and Murphy becomes suspicious that his partner is up to no good. Dehl arrives at a club where his girlfriend Ginny Lee (Irene Cara) sings and gives Leon Coll's crooked book keeper $25,000 from Primo Pitt.Pitt wants all of Coll's accounts to use as evidence against him so that he can take over the streets.Ginny Lee worries that Dehl is getting in too deep when he tells her of his plan to double cross Pitt and sell Coll his books back to him for $50,000.Later at a boxing match,Speer is on a date with Addy when Dehl arrives to meet Coll.Dehl tells Coll that his book keeper betrayed him and Pitt will have enough to bring him down. Dehl goes home and Speer follows him.When Dehl arrives he finds Ginny Lee been held hostage by Pitt and his gang.Attempting to save her,Ginny Lee manages to escape but Dehl is killed.Speer kills one of the henchmen.Pitt manages to escape without been seen but without the books he wanted.At the morgue,Speer fills Murphy in on the incident.As he leaves,Coll's men pick Murphy up and tell him about the situation with Dehl and the books and that he wants them back.But it isn't long before Pitt pays him a visit as well and tells him he has his girlfriend Caroline (Madeline Kahn) hostage and that he wants the books. Speer discovers that the bullet found in Dehl's body matches the bullet from Pitt's gun and tells Murphy he wants to know Ginny Lee's whereabouts so she can testify.But Murphy secretly meets her so he can try and find out where Dehl has hidden the books.He soon realises that he had stashed them in the locker of a boxing gym.Pitt's men arrive to try and get hold of Ginny Lee but as she escapes she is hit by a car. Now in possession of the books,Murphy plans to get Caroline back but Pitt's men and Coll's men arrive at the same time and he finds himself caught up in a shootout.Speer arrives and reluctantly takes care of the situtation.Murphy tells him about Caroline,so Speer joins him at Pitt's hideout for the exchange of the books.Pitt tells them that Caroline is been held somewhere else.Murphy tells him in that in the case with the books is also some explosives.A shootout breaks out and Speer ends up killing Pitt. Speer and Murphy extract the whereabouts of Caroline from one of the thugs - at a brothel.They set out to get her back.But at the same time,Addy is taken hostage by Coll and his men at her apartment.Speer and Murphy gate crash the brothel and beat up Pitt's remaining men and rescue Caroline.As they leave,Coll drives up with Addy and tells the pair he wants the books.Addy gets out of the car and Murphy hands Coll the case with the books and explosives.As Coll and his men drive off,the car explodes. Some time later,Ginny Lee is back singing at the club and Murphy is on a date with Caroline,while Speer is dating Addy.A fight breaks out between Murphy and a few guys and after making Speer spill his drink,Speer gets him outside for a fight.The film ends with the two squaring up to each other and trading insults.

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, richard benjamin, clint eastwood, burt reynolds, jane alexander, madeline kahn, technical specs.

A Kansas City police lieutenant who is on the trail of a horde of underworld scumbags with a private detective that keeps getting in his way.

William Sanderson

Wiley harker, lou filippo, tab thacker, christopher michael moore, bob terhune, richard foronjy, minnie summers lindsey.

Richard Roundtree

Arthur malet, carey loftin, robert herron, harry demopoulos, art lafleur, harry caesar, fred m. lerner, bruce m. fischer.

Nick Dimitri

Alex plasschaert, jude farese, hamilton camp, lana montrose, holgie forrester, daphne eckler, ernie sabella, charles parks, walter robles, george fisher, joan shawlee, darwyn swalve, edwin prevost, bob maxwell.

John Hancock

Gene lebell.

Tony Lobianco

Jack thibeau, nicholas worth, anthony charnota, michael maurer, tom spatley, preston sparks, gerald s. o'loughlin, george orrison, dallas cole, robert davi, edward aiona, dick alexander, harold arlen, matt earl beesley, paul calabria, jacqueline cambas, edward c carfagno, mike cassidy, gordon davidson, sandra davis, vince deadrick, richard drown, blake edwards, tom ellingswood, arlene encell, les fresholtz, george gaines, george gershwin, ira gershwin, jack n green, donald harris, bob henderson, chuck hicks, l dean jones, marie kenney, linda sony kinney, charles darin knight, ted koehler, sherman labby, barbara lampson, eloise laws, julius leflore, fritz manes, nick mclean, alan robert murray, lennie niehaus, michael o'shea, cole porter, debby porter, marcia reed, james reynolds, bruce roberts, mic rodgers, charlie saldana, norman saling, sharon schaffer, robert sessa, paula h shaw, stephen st john, joseph c stinson, daniel c striepeke, david valdes, rudy vallee, wayne van horn, harry warren, chuck waters, george wilbur, glenn wilder, joe williams, glenn t wright, hamilton camp (1934-2005).

Clint and Burt in City Heat

Miscellaneous notes.

Released in United States December 1984

Released in United States Winter December 1, 1984

Began shooting April 9, 1984.

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Where to watch

1984 Directed by Richard Benjamin

When a hotshot cop and a wise-guy detective get together... the heat is on!

Set in Kansas City in 1933, Eastwood plays a police lieutenant known simply by his last name, Speer. Reynolds plays a former cop turned private eye named Mike Murphy. Both Speer and Murphy served on the force together and were once good friends, but are now bitter enemies. When Murphy's partner is slain they team up again to fight the mob.

Clint Eastwood Burt Reynolds Jane Alexander Madeline Kahn Rip Torn Irene Cara Richard Roundtree Tony Lo Bianco William Sanderson Nicholas Worth Robert Davi Jude Farese John Hancock Jack Thibeau Gerald S. O'Loughlin Bruce M. Fischer Jack Nance Art LaFleur Tab Thacker

Director Director

Richard Benjamin

Producer Producer

Fritz Manes

Writers Writers

Joseph Stinson Blake Edwards

Editor Editor

Jacqueline Cambas

Cinematography Cinematography

Nick McLean

Production Design Production Design

Edward C. Carfagno

Set Decoration Set Decoration

George Gaines

Stunts Stunts

Buddy Van Horn Allan Graf

Composer Composer

Lennie Niehaus

Costume Design Costume Design

Norman Salling

Deliverance Productions Warner Bros. Pictures Malpaso Productions

Releases by Date

05 dec 1984, 07 dec 1984, 10 may 1985, 15 jan 1986, releases by country.

• Theatrical 16
• Premiere PG Los Angeles, California
• Theatrical PG

93 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★ 3

This is a gangster parody/noir pastiche team up between Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, made a few years after the moment the pairing would make the most sense. It used to be an easy movie to see on TV/video stores due to the star power, but barely no one seems to watch it now because it is just not good. Blake Edwards developed this, and it seems cut from a very similar place as his later Sunset, but he got fired, by most accounts by an unhappy Eastwood (Edwards script credit is under a pseudonym whose initials are SOB, like his 1981 anti Hollywood satire which probably says everything). It definitely feels like one of those sets whose power struggles…

Review by Michael501 📺 ★★ 8

Clint Eastwood A Retrospective - Week 29

In 1933, private investigator Mike Murphy (Burt Reynolds) is shocked when his partner, Dehl Swift (Richard Roundtree), is killed by thugs working for Primo Pitt (Rip Torn). Furious, Murphy asks his former police partner, Lt. Speer (Clint Eastwood), for help in putting a stop to the mobster. Though the two men now despise each other, Speer reluctantly agrees to help Murphy solve the murder -- while both court the private eye's secretary, Addy (Jane Alexander).

A movie starring Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood with a script by Blake Edwards, what could possibly go wrong? You would have thought this would be something incredible but there is nothing here but disappointment. Burt Reynolds plays…

Review by Keith G ★★

1984: Filling in the Gaps #23

"It wouldn't break my heart at all to scrape the street clean of your ilk. You know what an 'ilk' is, don't ya Dub?

A big deer?

Yeah. Now if I catch you loitering around my precinct again I'm gonna shoot me an ilk, do you understand?"

In Kansas City, 1933, cocky private eye Mike Murphy (Burt Reynolds), gets mixed up in his murdered business partner's (Richard Roundtree) dodgy dealings with local rival gangsters (Rip Torn and Tony Lo Bianco). Murphy clashes with stone faced Lt Speer (Clint Eastwood), an old rival who wants to nail both gangsters. The pair are further hindered by their gals (Jane Alexander and Madelaine Kahn) getting kidnapped and…

Review by Geoffrey Broomer ★★★½

Every Which Way But Smokey should have been Reynolds & Eastwood’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, instead it turned into their Righteous Kill. Both men’s screen personas handle material from violent action to corny middle American comedies with ease, and if they had settled on one style this would be a smash hit, but it tries to get complicated.

It’s an odd film - written by Blake Edwards under his S.O.B. Smithee moniker. Edwards was the original director who has a distinct comedic style, and Hollywood sensibilities. This would have been his follow-up to Victor/Victoria, and it’s his success with that period piece that brings these lavish sets to life. His finger prints are all over the production, with an…

Review by comrade_yui ★ 7

one of those classic cases of hollywood overthinking it -- take two of the biggest macho male stars of the time, put 'em in a movie, that should be enough, more than enough... no, we gotta make it a weird neo-expressionist period piece buddy cop film where clint and burt never actually feel like buddies, which isn't a big surprise. with clint, i understand why this didn't work -- he's usually at his best when surrounded by character actors who aren't trying to directly compete with him for screentime, so his films gain this relaxed hangout vibe. but watching city heat made me realize that i don't really enjoy burt reynolds as an actor -- maybe i'm missing something here,…

Review by Bryce Receveur ★★½

Dirty Harry and the Bandit... but not nearly as good as that joke would indicate.

Review by Eric Szyszka ★★½

Never finds its footing which is a shame because the production and set design is insane. We're constantly outside using 1930s period cars. Burt Reynolds! Clint Eastwood! Madeline Kahn! Rip Torn as a bad guy! Burt saying things like "you came in second at the snotball pageant!" and "I've been doing this since you were pissing your pants!" Yet it all falls flat. Blake Edwards script. Richard Benjamin, who has a wild filmography, directs.

Review by C.A. DeStefanis ★★

Few things age as poorly as comedy. You have to be a true master to make something that can withstand the shifting sands of time. Even more so when the comedy wasn't all that funny when it was released forty years ago. There are plenty of films that have managed this feat and are timeless. City Heat is not one of them.

I love Burt and I love Clint. The film looks period authentic. I like the premise, but all I could think while watching this was how I wish instead of making this a comedy, they had played it straight. Forty years down the road I'd much rather have a noir banger starring two of the greats than a…

Review by Mondo Cinema ★★★ 1

It has Dirty Harry, The Bandit, and Shaft, what more can you ask for??

Review by AndrewC ★★

Overplotted and undercooked, City Heat is regarded as one of the biggest bombs of Clint Eastwood's career and is indeed a really mediocre buddy-cop crime gangster comedy with a very forgettable lead pairing and few laughs even if it's still fairly watchable. Most buddy-cop films like this succeed or fail by their leads and this one is just so unremarkable, with Eastwood looking like he's checked out and Burt Reynolds unable to do much to liven things up. The script is the biggest issue by far though as the story is way too convoluted and uninspired, while also populated by stock characters that aren't very funny nor interesting. That means you're mostly just left watching the weak plot, various poorly…

Review by Matt ★★½

It seems downright criminal that a movie starring Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood is this mediocre. It has it’s moments, but overall, it just seems like a massive missed opportunity.

Review by babybob101 ★★

*hits blunt* what if…we made a comedy detective movie set in the 1930’s and it starred the bandit and Dirty Harry and they definitely made love to each other

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BENJAMIN DIRECTS 'CITY HEAT'

By Janet Maslin

• Dec. 7, 1984

OVERDRESSED and overplotted as it is, ''City Heat'' benefits greatly from the sardonic teamwork of Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Without them the film would be eminently forgettable, but their bantering gives it an enjoyable edge. Working together in very ''Sting''-like circumstances, they are cast, respectively, as a hard-boiled police lieutenant and a sharp-dressing private eye. Mr. Eastwood, in this Prohibition era setting, displays both his trademark steeliness and an underused talent for tongue-in-cheek comedy. For his part, Mr. Reynolds looks dashing and is back at the top of his wise-cracking form.

But the film itself, which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, manages to be both cumbersome and slight. As he did in ''My Favorite Year'' and, to some extent, in ''Racing With the Moon,'' Richard Benjamin has settled on an evocative time period and a top-notch cast and more or less left things at that. ''City Heat'' devotes much more energy to props, sets and outfits than to the dramatic streamlining it so badly needed. The screenplay, which is part ''Sting,'' part Sam Spade and part kitchen sink, is either a hopelessly convoluted genre piece or a much too subtle take-off on the same. It was written by Joseph C. Stinson with ''Sam O. Brown,'' a pseudonym for Blake Edwards (note Brown's initials), who at one time planned to direct it.

Fortunately, one of Mr. Benjamin's main contributions to the film is a good-humored buoyancy, even when things are at their most muddled. And the supporting cast (with names like Dub Slack and Primo Pitt) is a spirited one. Jane Alexander makes a sporting Girl Friday to Mr. Reynolds's Mike Murphy, her loyalty unimpaired by the vastness of the back salary he owes her; Rip Torn does some inspired eye-rolling and cigar-chomping as a gangster. Tony Lo Bianco plays a rival underworld kingpin and Richard Roundtree is around much too briefly as someone who makes the mistake of trying to double-cross both of these hoodlums. Madeline Kahn flutters by briefly as a dizzy heiress and Irene Cara, while over her head musically as a torch singer, is suitably distraught as a damsel in distress.

But Mr. Eastwood and Mr. Reynolds are of course the main attraction, trading lines like ''See you around, Shorty'' and ''Not if I see you first, Flatfoot.'' From the film's opening scene in a luncheonette - with Mr. Reynolds taking a terrible beating from some thugs and Mr. Eastwood blithely ignoring this, being angry at Mr. Reynolds over some previous grievance - to a closing shot that leaves them nose-to- nose, the two of them spar charmingly. All too often, though, Mr. Eastwood fixes his face into a comically wild-eyed version of his usual squint, indicating that a shootout is about to begin. For a slick, glossy big-name entertainment, ''City Heat'' is a good deal more corpse-littered than it had to be.

''City Heat'' is rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''). It contains a considerable amount of violence.

Gangsters Galore

CITY HEAT, directed by Richard Benjamin; screenplay by Sam O. Brown (Blake Edwards) and Joseph C. Stinson; story by Mr. Brown; director of photography, Nick McLean; edited by Jacqueline Cambas; music by Lennie Niehaus; produced by Fritz Manes; released by Warner Bros. At Criterion Center, Broadway and 45th Street; Manhattan Twin, 59th Street east of Third Avenue; 83d Street Quad, at Broadway; 86th Street Twin, at Lexington Avenue; Gramercy, 23d Street near Lexington Avenue, and other theaters. Running time: 94 minutes. This film is rated PG.

Lieutenant Speer . . . . . Clint Eastwood

Mike Murphy . . . . . Burt Reynolds

Addy . . . . . Jane Alexander

Caroline Howley . . . . . Madeline Kahn

Primo Pitt . . . . . Rip Torn

Ginny Lee . . . . . Irene Cara

Dehl Swift . . . . . Richard Roundtree

Leon Coll . . . . . Tony Lo Bianco

Lonnie Ash . . . . . William Sanderson

Troy Roker . . . . . Nicholas Worth

Nino . . . . . Robert Davi

Dub Slack . . . . . Jude Farese

MPAA Rating

Produced by, city heat (1984), directed by richard benjamin.

• AllMovie Rating 4
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Synopsis by Eleanor Mannikka

Characteristics, related movies.

"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Burt is a behind-on-his-payments gumshoe, Clint is the Lieutenant who used to be his partner before he quit the force. Now they act like they hate each other, but of course they team up and work pretty well together. Their first scene together is a good one: Clint sits at the counter in a diner, drinking his coffee, staying out of it while two mafia thugs beat the shit out of Burt. He wants nothing to do with it until he gets bumped and spills some of his coffee, then he gets pissed.

The plot is something about Roundtree trying to scam somebody and getting thrown out a window, gangsters taking Burt’s girl for ransom, stuff like that. You got your fedoras, tommyguns, big old cars, cigars, secret bottles of gin, jazz clubs, racial segregation and all that. Irene Cara sings a couple songs, gets hit by a car. It’s no THE COTTON CLUB. There’s pretty broad slapstick humor in the fights, Burt sliding down a counter, saying a funny line to Clint, then getting thrown across the room. It’s way more of a Burt Reynolds movie than a Clint Eastwood one, but the soundtrack features some of Clint’s beloved piano blues, and he gets to sit down at the keys in the end, so it’s not entirely missing his touch.

I like both of these guys, of course, but I’m not sure their styles could’ve gone well together. Their humor is pretty different, and also different from Blake Edwards, who wrote this under the pseudonym Sam O. Brown (he was fired as director). Most of the jokes that seem like his style come off pretty clunky and forced. One exception is a weird touch where a truck catches fire during a shootout, then a car runs over a fire hydrant and the water happens to spray right onto the fire and put it out. Those are two separate things that often happen in car chases and shootouts, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them combined like that before. (If only they could’ve gotten a burning fruit stand in there.)

There’s also a pretty good whorehouse fetish gag. Burt busts in a window on his quest to rescue the kidnapped girl and interrupts a Congressman role-playing a Little Red Riding Hood fantasy. Burt ends up punching out a bunch of dudes while wearing a paper mache wolf mask, night gown and bonnet. Gumshoe disguised as a john disguised as a wolf disguised as Grandma. It’s goofy even for this movie, more upfront about being a joke than the bear suit part in THE WICKER MAN remake . But I liked it. (I was less willing to go along with the joke where he’s opening different doors and he hears a horse inside one of the rooms.)

This is not a Clint directorial work, obviously. The director is Richard Benjamin, who did like THE MONEY PIT, MERMAIDS, MARCI X, not really anything great I don’t think. Joseph Stinson is credited as co-writer, he’d done SUDDEN IMPACT , so I bet Clint brought him in to Clint-up a comedy script a little bit. He later did STICK with Burt, so it worked out for him at least.

Not one of the better Clint movies, but it does have Clint in it, which automatically gives it an advantage over most movies.

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22 Responses to “City Heat”

January 14th, 2013 at 10:53 pm

I always found this movie to be charming, but I do wonder what i would have been like as a straight action/gangster movie. I do think I would have licked it better that way, you know more of a Clint Eastwood movie with Burt Reynolds along for the ride. Also, STICK is a cool underrated movie.

January 14th, 2013 at 11:26 pm

I’m just happy to see a new post, Vern. I was starting to worry about you! (Thought maybe you finally saw Les Mis and it drained your will to think about movies.)

January 15th, 2013 at 12:07 am

Always liked Mermaids. Nothing overtly special, but I just loved how it was sold as a sweet, mother-daughter comedy but turned out to be a coming-of-age story about having daddy abandonment issues and losing your virginity on the grounds of a convent to get back at your slutty mom, played by Cher. (My mom’s face was classic as she realized what we were watching, but she was okay with it after the initial shock.) And it had a young, per-Wednesday Addams Christina Ricci stealing scenes from Cher and Winona Ryder. It was also the first movie soundtrack I ever bought on CD. Actually, I think it was the first CD I ever bought.

January 15th, 2013 at 12:57 am

Richard Benjamin did direct a movie I liked from 1982 called MY FAVORITE YEAR starring Peter O’Toole and Mark Linn-Baker(TV’s Cousin Larry from PERFECT STRANGERS) and Jessica Harper from PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. It’s set in the 1950s about a young writer(Baker) for a live comedy show program who befriends the week’s guest host, an aging star of swashbuckling moves(O’Toole) who is an alcoholic. It’s basically the same plot as GET HIM TO THE GREEK but without the road trip stuff. It’s supposed to be based on Mel Brooks’ experience as a writer on “Your Show of Shows”.

January 15th, 2013 at 3:10 am

It’s a pretty “meh” movie, I can’t think of an example of a Blake Edwards movie done right by another director, though please correct me if I’m wrong. Edwards isn’t perfect, but he has a very specific rhythm. As for Benjamin, he’s better known as an actor, for me eternally the hapless commander of the short-lived space garbage comedy Quark. It was no Police Squad! or When Things Were Rotten but it has its moments.

CITY HEAT is a title I always confuse with the equally bland Burt Lancaster/Kirk Douglas TOUGH GUYS.

January 15th, 2013 at 3:14 am

Over the years I’ve found that it’s better to look at CITY HEAT as a film noir hommage with some funny lines than the comedy it was marketed as. Both Burt and Clint were coming out of their “funny” periods in 1984, so I don’t really get why they went for this script. But on certain viewings I like it.

January 15th, 2013 at 3:43 am

I’ve been making my dad laugh with my Rip Torn impersonation lately

January 15th, 2013 at 4:02 am

Griff, what material do you use?

January 15th, 2013 at 7:44 am

And does it involve your local bank?

Also, I was half way through reading this review when I realized it wasn’t the one with James Garner and Bruce Willis.

January 15th, 2013 at 8:14 am

For some reason those old absurdist, slapstick filled comedies just don’t work after the 1960s. There are a number of them from that decade and earlier that are still enjoyable, but once you hit the seventies that kind of humor, for whatever reason, just doesn’t land the way it should.

January 15th, 2013 at 8:31 am

I don’t remember a whole lot about this, I think I might have seen 10 minutes of it on cable. But Clint’s good at comedy when it’s the right material. HEARTBREAK RIDGE is a good example. Bill Murray did an interview with Elvis Mitchell on Turner Classic Movies and talked about Clint offering him a WWII comedy he had in development right after STRIPES. He said he turned it down, but said he always wanted to do something like the Jeff Bridges role in THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT.

January 15th, 2013 at 10:01 am

If you read Burt’s autobiography, he really hurt himself on this movie (a breakaway chair didn’t break when it hit him or something), and he was seriously ill for a long time afterwards. He did most of the movie in a complete daze of pain and pain meds.

January 15th, 2013 at 10:33 am

Rumour had it back then that it was Eastwood who hit him, breaking his jaw in the process and getting him hooked on pain killers.

January 15th, 2013 at 11:47 am

And that affected Burt’s career for awhile, because his resulting appearance made everybody think he contracted AIDS, right?

January 15th, 2013 at 1:29 pm

Yes, I remember when STICK came out the year after he had a beard at the beginning of the movie, like a lot of AIDS victims tend to have, and I was wondering if the rumours were true. But then he shaved it of and put on his best wig and looked like the old Burt again.

January 15th, 2013 at 2:33 pm

He said during that time he was healing from the injury and dealing with all that negative press, Clint was his only friend in Hollywood that would talk to him.

January 15th, 2013 at 3:25 pm

“Griff, what material do you use?”

the ending of Robocop 3, Men in Black quotes, Dodgeball quotes and the real life instance where he got into a fight with Dennis Hopper

January 15th, 2013 at 4:16 pm

Watch him on THE LARRY SANDERS show. Nothing springs to mind, but one quote during the episode Jon Stewart guest hosted and the musical guest was a rap act and one of the network heads is complaining that they are “too urban”, to which his character retorts something to the effect of why not get Lenny Kravitz, since he’s “half-urban”.

January 15th, 2013 at 9:27 pm

Griff, I hope you use: “Son, you’re about as useful as a poopy-flavored lollipop!” Or “I get better runs in my shorts!”

Rip Torn really had most of the best lines in Dodgeball.

That Lance Armstrong exchange will take on new meaning, though.

January 16th, 2013 at 1:09 pm

I thought Clint was funny in THE ENFORCER, especially during the scene where they’re evaluating different candidates for detective.

February 1st, 2013 at 12:12 pm

Burt talks about the accident here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAvNaTBG_A

Links to the other parts are on the page. Not sure which part it’s on but he does reference it.

There’s a lot of fluff in this interview (it’s Piers Morgan, after all), but there’s some great stuff in there, too.

Good ol’ Burt. My man crush is as strong as ever.

July 18th, 2014 at 9:30 pm

Hi my loved one! I wish to say that this article is amazing, great written and come with almost all significant infos. I would like to look more posts like this .

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

There's little doubt that City Heat gets off to a distressingly disastrous start...

Burt and Clint might not go down as one of the great comic teams in history, but as a private investigator and a cop in City Heat, they bring fireworks to a lackluster season.

Imagine The Sting without charm, and you have a fix on City Heat.

... the movie's never as good as it might have been.

Bottom line: Good roles for the stars, nice production values, and an impressive supporting cast, but no thrills and only minor laughs.

An amiable but decidedly lukewarm confection geared entirely around the two star turns.

What could have been an interesting and funny period piece under the directorship of original screenwriter Edwards is turned into a tedious, infantile mess by director Benjamin.

It's certainly not a subtle movie, but with memorable performances, ludicrously over-the-top one-liners and amiable zaniness, it qualifies as a lot of fun.

One wishes the only pairing of Clint and Burt were better, but City Heat is still fun.

Additional Info

• Genre : Action, Comedy
• Release Date : December 7, 1984
• Languages : English
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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Set in Kansas City in 1933, Eastwood plays a police lieutenant known simply by his last name, Speer. Reynolds plays a former cop turned private eye named Mike Murphy. Both Speer and Murphy served on the force together and were once good friends, but are now bitter enemies. When Murphy's partner is slain they team up again to fight the mob.

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Twenty-Five Years Later, ‘Heat’ Is Still the Juice

A meeting of two legends, an iconic ode to L.A., and a perfect heist thriller

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There is a moment in Heat that’s been living rent-free in my head for 25 years. It’s not one of the famous ones, of which there are plenty. Think of the opening glimpse of an urban rail train slowly coming into focus through plumes of smoke, its approaching headlights holding the audience in thrall. Or the closing tableau of Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna standing victorious (or is he?) over the body of his professional nemesis and spiritual sibling Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), as the city flickers indifferently in the distance.

But the image I’m thinking of comes in the chaos of the brutal mid-film shoot-out between Vincent’s and Neil’s cops-and-robbers crews—a 10-minute set piece that’s like an entire action movie in miniature, exploding all of Heat ’s simmering tensions in a hail of semiautomatic gunfire. Acting on a tip from one of their quarry’s disgruntled ex-confederates, Vincent and his LAPD robbery/homicide squad members ambush Neil’s team during a daring daylight bank robbery. As the bullets start flying, Vincent’s partner Bosko (Ted Levine) is hit and falls to the ground. Rushing toward the body, Vincent looks down and we get a shot of Levine lying prone and staring, his green eyes wild and frozen in sightless surprise. Vincent moves on, but a question lingers: How did a man who knew exactly what he was signing up for not see it coming?

Like no other Hollywood filmmaker of his vintage, Michael Mann is entrenched as an existentialist. The life-and-death stakes in his films are partially a by-product of the crime movie genre, with its lethal rituals of violence and reprisal. But in lieu of weightless escapism, the Chicago-born director pursues a sense of gravitas that bypasses melodrama for something more ephemeral. At his best—and a case can be made that Heat is Mann at his best—Mann’s movies feel cosmic. If Mann’s great theme is compulsion to live dangerously, he’s hardly shy about contemplating the consequences.

Mann is serious, but he’s also a show-off. One reason that he’s been so canonized by academics and auteurists alike is that his muscular-yet-mystical storytelling technique—relentless forward momentum punctuated by philosophical pauses—almost always calls attention to itself. Ditto the director’s embrace of digital formats, which he has used not in service of seamless illusion, à la the invisible CGI suturing of David Fincher, but to deconstruct and reimagine the visual syntax of multiplex action movies. Heat was shot on crisp 35 mm film, and it’s a beautiful-looking movie, but its follow-ups have been suspended between clarity and murk; think of the neon rainbows of Collateral , or Miami Vice , with its screen-saver skies. That this aesthetic transition from calculated, classical slickness to a blurry immediacy hasn’t really changed the substance of Mann’s work speaks to the consistency of his world view. Whatever lens he’s looking through, he always sees the same things.

What Mann’s movies perceive most acutely is the dilemma of professionalism—a contradiction dating back to his 1981 feature debut, Thief . There, James Caan’s master safecracker tried to extricate himself from a life of crime despite his genius-level proficiency at its dark arts. Instead of imposing or inviting judgment on a character, Mann emphasized the inherent value of a job well done, and exalted his hero’s refusal to let his gifts be subordinated or exploited by gangsters whose brute-force operations are analogous to corporate capitalism. It’s no coincidence that the two most hateful characters in Heat are William Fichtner’s white-collar money launderer Roger Van Zant and Kevin Gage’s perverse serial killer Waingro, nor that they end up forging an unlikely alliance. Waingro’s explanation for wasting two helpless cops and compromising an otherwise precise heist—a mistake that sets the movie’s plot in motion—is “I had to get it on.” If there’s anything that Mann despises more than cynical expediency, it’s sloppiness.

De Niro’s performance in Heat is a model of composure—the title of the book we see him reading, Stress Fractures in Titanium , encapsulates his unflappability. Pacino is more voluble, operating in the same realm of borderline self-parody as The Devil’s Advocate but yoking his flamboyance smartly to the demands of the role. Whenever Vincent flies off the handle, it’s always shown to be purposeful—as the coping mechanism of a put-upon, possibly coked-up cop . Depending on the situation, Vincent is willing to go by the book or to throw it away. It’s no surprise that critics riding Mann’s wavelength, as well as detractors skeptical of his legend, are equally primed to size up his studies of weirdo, alpha-male ascetics—from FBI profilers ( Manhunter ), to boxers ( Ali ), to contract killers ( Collateral ), to freelance hackers ( Blackhat )—as distinct brush strokes in some collective painting of directorial self-portraiture.

The pathos in Mann’s movies—including and especially Heat —comes from the impossibility of reconciling individual excellence with conventional forms of security and fulfillment. This lone-wolf archetype gets effectively doubled in Heat , which was sold as an unprecedented summit of two ranking New Hollywood icons. The coffee date between Neil and Vincent— which, amazingly, was never rehearsed prior to shooting —is exactly as intense and enjoyable as you remember, heightened by Mann’s choice to cut exclusively between over-the-shoulder close-ups, as if the characters were reluctant to share the frame. The point of the scene, of course, is that Vincent and Neil are mirror images of one another, virtuoso workaholics in trades with life-or-death stakes. There’s a comic-book aspect to their rivalry, which may be why Christopher Nolan cribbed so much from Heat in his Batman movies. The difference is that where The Dark Knight strives to give its globally recognized icons a human dimension, Heat makes a couple of guys having a cup of coffee into myth.

Heat ’s pulpy grandeur stems not only from Mann’s characteristic formalism: his serene, lyrical establishing shots and his hyperbolic use of color to delineate psychological states. It’s also a testament to his instincts as a city filmmaker. With respect to Pacino and De Niro, if Heat deserved an acting Oscar, it would be for Los Angeles playing itself. Shooting in and around America’s most widely photographed city, Mann insisted on locations that had only rarely (or never) been used before. The result is a movie that evokes an entire history of L.A.-based procedurals without ever replicating them. If it’s possible for a film to feel simultaneously specific and nondescript, Heat ’s topography of lonely off-ramps, glowing industrial towers, and rusted metal shipping containers is like wasteland vérité. Even the most chic and luxurious spaces are made strange by Mann’s belief in a steely, unvarnished realism. When Vincent catches his wife, Justine (Diane Venora), cheating on him with a stranger named Ralph (Xander Berkeley), he’s seemingly less aggrieved by her infidelity than that he has to come home to her “ex-husband’s dead-tech, postmodernistic bullshit house” in order to deal with it.

“When do you finally want to buy furniture?” cracks Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) upon waking up broke and hungover on the floor in Neil’s spartan beachfront residence—a question that, like so much of the dialogue in Heat , pops the hood on the sequence’s subtexts about literal and figurative emptiness. “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner,” Neil tells his pal, a dictum that apparently extends to couches. (A shot of a gun being placed on a glass table quotes the Canadian painter Alex Colville’s 1967 masterpiece Pacific while indicating the extent of Neil’s material possessions.) The common denominator between Vincent and Neil is their commitment-phobic approach to personal relationships—their need to build themselves escape hatches.

But Chris, who’s played by Kilmer in a wonderfully weird performance that’s almost a parody of broodingly handsome fuck-ups, is defined by his devotion to his wife, Charlene (Ashley Judd). Heat surrounds both of its protagonists with figures who serve as liabilities to their respective enterprises—women and children, mostly, with Vincent growing ever more protective of his stepdaughter Lauren (Natalie Portman). Neil, meanwhile, is threatened not only by his emerging romance with Amy Brenneman’s Eady—a newcomer to L.A. who explains on a first date that graphic design is her passion—but also by Charlene through the proxy of Chris. There is a strange, troubling scene where Neil confronts Charlene about her extramarital affair and basically threatens her to stay with her compulsive-gambler husband until he’s completed one last big score or else. Even though we know De Niro is playing an antihero, there’s something unsettling about the character’s willingness to intimidate and instrumentalize the people around him that complicates his romantic self-conception as a lone wolf. It’s one thing to live by an ascetic, samurai-like code of self-preservation; it’s another to try to impose those standards on everybody else.

Heat ’s sprawling plot is filled with poetic coincidences, like having Waingro revealed as the serial killer Vincent has been trailing since long before the film begins; when Neil kills Waingro in retribution for screwing up his operation (and selling him out to Van Zant), he’s unknowingly doing his pursuer’s work for him (yet another of the script’s doubling motifs). The structure piles on tragedies, like the subplot about a sympathetic ex-con (Dennis Haysbert) whose recidivism gets him killed out of nowhere. By the time Vincent is rushing Lauren to the hospital after a suicide attempt, the three-hour running time feels more like a compressed minseries—which is actually true enough.

Mann originally wrote the script for Heat in 1979, integrating the experiences and anecdotes of a Chicago-based cop named Chuck Adamson. His 16-year odyssey to get the movie made suggests a deeply personal investment in the material. Mann’s 1989 television movie L.A. Takedown was conceived as a TV pilot for NBC following the success of Miami Vice. If you watch it now, you can see the narrative and thematic outlines of Heat: the Vincent-Neil rivalry, the laserlike focus on police procedure, the loose-cannon Waingro subplot (with the character played by Xander Berkeley), a big shoot-out that brings together all the different plot threads. What’s missing, though—besides a $60 million budget and two gigantic movie stars—is the grandiloquent passion of the movie version.

Nobody who loves Heat can deny that it’s pretentious. It’s very pretentious: For the final showdown between Pacino and De Niro, Mann uses Moby’s meditative, synth-driven “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters,” a title that expressly reflects the director’s metaphysical aspirations. The song competes for space on the soundtrack with the thundering of jets overhead as Neil and Vincent stalk each other one last time on the tarmac at LAX, a backdrop symbolizing departure and freedom—the latter paradoxically achieved by Neil going out on his own terms.

“Brother, you are going down,” Vincent had told Neil earlier in the diner. The greatness of Mann’s ending is that it fulfills the lethal part of Pacino’s prophecy while making us feel everything implied in that biblical word “brother.” Just because we can see the finale coming doesn’t make it any less devastating. The inevitability is part of the shock. The pretentiousness is the point. The action is the juice. The movie is the best.

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There is a sequence at the center of Michael Mann's "Heat" that illuminates the movie's real subject. As it begins, a Los Angeles police detective named Hanna ( Al Pacino ) has been tracking a high-level thief named McCauley ( Robert De Niro ) for days. McCauley is smart and wary and seems impossible to trap. So, one evening, tailing McCauley's car, Hanna turns on the flashers and pulls him over.

McCauley carefully shifts the loaded gun he is carrying. He waits in his car. Hanna approaches it and says, "What do you say I buy you a cup of coffee?" McCauley says that sounds like a good idea.

The two men sit across from each other at a Formica table in a diner: Middle-aged, weary, with too much experience in their lines of work, they know exactly what they represent to one other, but for this moment of truce they drink their coffee.

McCauley is a professional thief, skilled and gifted. When Hanna subtly suggests otherwise, he says, "You see me doing thrill-seeker liquor store holdups with a 'Born to Lose' tattoo on my chest?" No, says the cop, he doesn't. The conversation comes to an end. The cop says, "I don't know how to do anything else." The thief says, "Neither do I." The scene concentrates the truth of "Heat," which is that these cops and robbers need each other: They occupy the same space, sealed off from the mainstream of society, defined by its own rules.

They are enemies, but in a sense they are more intimate, more involved with each other than with those who are supposed to be their friends - their women, for example.

The movie's other subject is the women. Two of the key players in "Heat" have wives, and in the course of the movie, McCauley will fall in love, which is against his policy. Hanna is working on his third marriage, with a woman named Justice ( Diane Venora ), who is bitter because his job obsesses him: "You live among the remains of dead people." One of McCauley's crime partners is a thief named Shiherlis ( Val Kilmer ), whose wife is Charlene ( Ashley Judd ).

McCauley's own policy is never to get involved in anything that he can't shed in 30 seconds flat. One day in a restaurant he gets into a conversation with Eady ( Amy Brenneman ), who asks him a lot of questions. "Lady," he says to her, "why are you so interested in what I do?" She is lonely. "I am alone," he tells her. "I am not lonely." He is in fact the loneliest man in the world, and soon finds that he needs her.

This is the age-old conflict in American action pictures, between the man with "man's work" and the female principal, the woman who wants to tame him, wants him to stay at home. "Heat," with an uncommonly literate screenplay by Mann, handles it with insight. The men in his movie are addicted to their lives. There is a scene where the thieves essentially have all the money they need. They can retire. McCauley even has a place picked out in New Zealand. But another job presents itself, and they cannot resist it: "It's the juice. It's the action." The movie intercuts these introspective scenes with big, bravura sequences of heists and shoot-outs. It opens with a complicated armored car robbery involving stolen semis and tow trucks. It continues with a meticulously conceived bank robbery.

McCauley is the mastermind. Hanna is the guy assigned to guess his next move.

The cops keep McCauley and his crew under 24-hour surveillance, and one day follow them to an isolated warehouse area, where the thieves stand in the middle of a vast space and McCauley outlines some plan to them. Later, the cops stand in the same place, trying to figure out what plan the thieves could possibly have had in mind. No target is anywhere in view. Suddenly Hanna gets it: "You know what they're looking at? They're looking at us - the LAPD. We just got made." He is right. McCauley is now on a roof looking at them through a lens, having smoked out his tail.

De Niro and Pacino, veterans of so many great films in the crime genre, have by now spent more time playing cops and thieves than most cops and thieves have. There is always talk about how actors study people to base their characters on. At this point in their careers, if Pacino and De Niro go out to study a cop or a robber, it's likely their subject will have modeled himself on their performances in old movies. There is absolute precision of effect here, the feeling of roles assumed instinctively.

What is interesting is the way Mann tests these roles with the women. The wives and girlfriends in this movie are always, in a sense, standing at the kitchen door, calling to the boys to come in from their play. Pacino's wife, played by Venora with a smart bitterness, is the most unforgiving: She is married to a man who brings corpses into bed with him in his dreams. Her daughter, rebellious and screwed up, is getting no fathering from him. Their marriage is a joke, and when he catches her with another man, she accurately says he forced her to demean herself.

The other women, played by Judd and Brenneman, are not quite so insightful. They still have some delusions, although Brenneman, who plays a graphic artist, balks as any modern woman would when this strange, secretive man expects her to leave her drawing boards and her computer and follow him to uncertainty in New Zealand.

Michael Mann's writing and direction elevate this material.

It's not just an action picture. Above all, the dialogue is complex enough to allow the characters to say what they're thinking: They are eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic when necessary. They're not trapped with cliches. Of the many imprisonments possible in our world, one of the worst must be to be inarticulate - to be unable to tell another person what you really feel. These characters can do that. Not that it saves them.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Heat (1995)

Rated R For Violence and Language

174 minutes

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Produced, Written and Directed by

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City Heat ( 1984)

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Windy City Heat Reviews

While the film was funny at times, it was horribly boring at others. I sat patiently awaiting the ending that I thought would be coming. Read more at Film School Rejects: https://filmschoolrejects.com/dvd-windy-city-heat/#ixzz4uTrHnKdt

Full Review | Original Score: D- | Oct 3, 2017

With such absurdity abounding, it's hard to gauge who should be insulted more: the audience or Perry.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Oct 3, 2017

It's all worth a watch. In an age where "reality" comedy is coming to the forefront with Jackass and Borat, Windy City Heat is a worthy brother in the genre.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2017

Leave it to the minds behind Comedy Central's Crank Yankers to pull this off. What's unbelievable is that they have reportedly been pulling pranks on poor Perry for many, many years.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 3, 2017

The producers reap their comedy product and Caravello collects his 15-plus minutes of fame as star of this endearingly goofy mock doc.

Windy City is either incredibly cruel or incredibly pointless; either way, it's immature, repetitive and unfunny.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 30, 2011

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City Hunter – Netflix Review (2/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Apr 25, 2024 | 3 minutes

CITY HUNTER on Netflix is a new movie from Japan. It’s a crazy genre hybrid that goes from silly to serious and then satirical in split seconds. It isn’t my thing, but others will surely love it. Read our City Hunter (2024) movie review here!

CITY HUNTER (2024) is a new Netflix movie from Japan (org. title: Shiti Hanta ). It’s based on a Manga and has already been made into a cartoon in the 1980s and a movie starring Jackie Chan in 1993. I’m sure there are lots of fans all over the world, who will love this Netflix movie.

Unfortunately, I am not one of them. It just doesn’t hit any of my sweet spots. I usually love genre hybrids, but this one has the Cowboy Bebop vibe that just did not work for me either. The runtime is just 1 hour and 42 minutes, which I did find was a good thing for the story covered.

Continue reading our  City Hunter movie review below. Find it on Netflix from April 25, 2024.

The first Japanese live-action adaption

I can understand why this has been a long-awaited adaption as the previously mentioned Jackie Chan movie (supposedly one of his own least favorite movies) was a Chinese live-action adaption. This Netflix movie is the first time the Manga is getting a Japanese live-action movie.

In  City Hunter , we meet Ryo Saeba. He is a top-class “sweeper” and we’re about to find out how he ends up working with Kaori Makimura. She’s the sister of his long-time partner, which isn’t something the original manga focused much on.

This alone should make for a great addition to the world of City Hunter for fans of the manga. It really does focus mainly on the story behind this partnership. Well, okay, and a case that has some sci-fi or supernatural (depending on how you look at it) elements as well.

“XYZ, please find my sister”

In this story, Ryo Saeba is working his “sweeper” magic (and sometimes doing a little dance in his briefs) in the underbelly of modern-day Shinjuku, Tokyo. He’s described as “balancing a cool demeanor with a fun personality” which is what I translate as him being very silly most of the time.

The movie opens with the message “XYZ, please find my sister” written on a message board. This leads to Ryo and his partner Hideyuki going out to search for Kurumi. She’s a famous cosplayer who has landed in serious trouble.

At the same time, we also become familiar with mysterious violent incidents taking place in Shinjuku. There are brutal scenes and a dark story at the heart of it all. I should love it, but it feels so superficial to me. It’s the style of it. It doesn’t resonate with me.

However, I absolutely want to acknowledge and respect that others will love it.

Watch  City Hunter (2024) on Netflix now!

This new Netflix movie from Japan (org. title: Shiti Hanta ) is the live-action adaptation of the legendary manga “City Hunter” by Tsukasa Hojo. The director is Yûichi Satô ( Kasane ) and the screenwriter is Tatsuro Mishima ( Yu yu hakusho , Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead ).

“Ryo Saeba” is played by Ryohei Suzuki, who has an impressive six-pack and would be a lot more charming to me, if the silliness was dialed down. However, I suspect fans of City Hunter wouldn’t recognize the character then.

Misato Morita portrays his future partner, and the cool heroine, “Kaori Makimura”. Finally, Masanobu Ando plays “Hideyuki Makimura” while Fumino Kimura co-stars as “Detective Saeko Nogami”.

Despite being a fan of horror-comedy and other genre hybrids, this one jumps between moods, styles, and genres at such a pace that I cannot give in to it. A shame really. Especially because I can see the intriguing story there.

City Hunter  (org. title: Shiti Hanta ) is on Netflix from April 25, 2024.

Director: Yuichi Satoh Screenplay: Tatsuro Mishima Cast: Ryohei Suzuki, Misato Morita, Masanobu Ando, Asuka Hanamura, Ayame Misaki, Moemi Katayama, Ami201, Tetta Sugimoto, Takaya Sakoda, and Fumino Kimura, Isao Hashizume

An exceptional marksman and hopeless playboy, private eye Ryo Saeba reluctantly forms an alliance with his late partner’s sister to investigate his death.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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REVIEW: ‘City Hunter’ Does Action-Comedy Right

N etflix Original film City Hunter adapts the legendary manga City Hunter by mangaka Tsukasa Hojo. The film proves again that live-action adaptations work when the heart of the source material is honored. In the film, we follow Ryo Saeba ( Ryohei Suzuki ), the number one “sweeper” of the Underworld. Fun and action-packed, Saeba pummels and investigates his way through modern-day Shinjuku with his best friend’s sister, Kaori Makimura ( Misato Morita ).

If the title seems familiar, it’s because this isn’t the first time the manga has gotten the live-action treatment. The first came in 1993, with Jackie Chan taking on the role of Ryo Saeba and then again for a 2011 K-Drama series where Lee Min-ho played a Korean version of Saeba, Lee Yun-Seong.

More recently, City Hunter  was adapted into a French live-action in 2018 with Philippe Lacheau playing Nicky Larson (who is pretty much Saeba). This manga has a long history, and director Yuichi Satoh’s take on the series, with a screenplay by Tatsuro Mishima, is an absolute standout. This is hard to do when you’re up against the action great Jackie Chan.

After receiving a cryptic message, Saeba and Hideyuki, known as the “City Hunter,” set out to search for Kurumi, a famous cosplayer. When Hideyuki is tragically killed during the investigation, his sister Kaori demands answers about her brother’s death, and she won’t stop until she has them.

The plot thickens quickly when “Angel Dust” enters the story, a drug at the heart of the violent incidents plaguing Shinjuku. The twist? Kurumi is key to unlocking the truth behind it. With a clue to the answer, Saeba and Makimura embark on a quest to uncover the truth shrouding Hideyuki’s death. Along the way, they make a few stops at hostess bars.

Action Director Takashi Tanimoto’s fight choreography is absolutely stunning. Each fight has a weight that makes it feel intense. However, that’s balanced against a slapstick comedy that softens the mood without softening any blows. While the hand-to-hand combat in City Hunter is absolutely top-notch, it’s the gun work that stands out. Sure, these bullet physics may not be real, but they look really good and pack a large punch.

Add the superhuman strength injections, and the action in City Hunter  pushes the boundaries of hard-action fight sequences and comedy. While nothing gets too brutal, the film doesn’t hold its punches when it comes to intricate fight sequences or when it shows the damage caused by the tiny bombs in the bad guys’ heads. But the camera expertly pans away without disrupting the scene’s tension, allowing it to attain a lower rating.

In the film’s third act, we see Saeba and Makimura storming a facility. We see a firefight that also weaves in hand-to-hand combat. Humorously, Saeba calls for more guns as Makimura tosses them his way, and the entire sequence plays out like one long buddy cop action extravaganza that solidifies City Hunter as an actioner.

As for characters, Saeba is a womanizing playboy, but he’s also not a bad guy. He’s attractive, can sing and dance, and knows how to use a gun. His high school humor may wear slightly thin at times, but how Ryohei Suzuki delivers it is somehow endearing—for me, at least.

This, coupled with the fact that Saeba’s own body and its attractiveness are the butt of many jokes, makes it all even out. The comedy he brings and the eccentricity he lives in are essential to crafting a dynamic action-comedy story in City Hunter. 

With action at its core and enough adolescent boob humor to either make you cringe or laugh,  City Hunter  also pulls off a pretty emotional story. While Saeba carries the action in the film , Makimura is its heart. She brings out the best in Saeba but isn’t related to only being in the story to benefit him. Instead, Makimura is able to highlight the complex dynamic of being a sibling who wants to take care of her family but has no way to do so.

With her brother a constant delinquent, she carries the guilt of being unable to save him with her. It’s a vulnerability that carries throughout the film as Saeba and her get closer. But instead of further sheltering Makimura, Saeba lets her step into the fray. A choice that does a lot to give Makimura agency in her part of the story.

City Hunter  thrives on its absurdity. Sure, Ryo Saeba isn’t the most likable protagonist, but he is endlessly charismatic (especially when his shirt is off). Suzuki is a phenomenal comedic actor and also a clear action star. No matter what scene he is in, Saeba steals it all. This is his film.

If you’re even slightly against playboy characters, this might not be for you. But if you’re all in on a seemingly horrible guy with a real heart of gold and badass action sequences, then City Hunter  is ace.

City Hunter  is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.

The post REVIEW: ‘City Hunter’ Does Action-Comedy Right appeared first on But Why Tho? .