Director: Dick Richards
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Karen Young, Peter MacNicol
No, this film is in no way shape or form related to the beloved Al Pacino/ Robert De Niro 1995 crime classic Heat. instead this is a laughably bad run of the mill action movie, but with its healthy dosage of Burt Reynolds action sequences and some cheesy over seriousness from the supporting actors keeps this movie still entertaining and bad in that good sorta way.
The two reasons why I bothered to go out of my way to watch this obscure little action movie were one; im a huge Burt Reynolds fan and to me any movie with him cant be too bad, and as of last year a remake of this movie has gone into development with Jason Statham in the lead role and as producer(!). With having seen this film now I have to say out of all the movies to remake this is a perfect one to remake.
Now hear me out usually people freak out about remakes and its because people will do a lame unnecessary remake of a film that nobody wants to be remade nor even needs to be remade like the recent stale remake of Total Recall and the terrible 2001 Planet of the Apes remake. No this movie has so much potential and great concepts it just fails to execute them properly.
The problems that this movie suffers from really that I haven't mentioned already are a lot of the dialogue and drama in the movie falls flat. Then they try to rush in to many substory`s that don`t work very well because they're rushed. Like there is the whole thing involving Reynolds characters gambling problem, him sticking up for this girl who gets kicked around and beaten by "powerful" people, and then him training a kinda wimpy guy to be a bad ass like him. All of these little plots could have intertwined perfectly but it just felt too rushed and just doesn't work as good as it could have.
Other then that I don't have much else to say about the movie. Burt Reynolds is great as always as the lead and they're some very satisfying scenes were he kicks the crap out of Las Vegas mobsters. I cant really recomend this movie to anyone unless they are actually curious to watch it or are Burt Reynolds fans like me. I am though very excited about the upcoming remake of this film with Jason Statham in the starring role and is being directed by Simon West, who recently directed the fantastic The Expendables 2 and the 2011 remake of The Mechanic (also starring Jasen Statham) which I liked better then the originally 70s version. So it could hardly be remade by anybody better, but as for the original only watch it if your genuinely curious.
