Luke
stu-kicks
Tash Jayasinghe
CibbuanoRed Heat
August 31st 2006 07:56
Red Heat (1988)
You've just gotta love 80s Arnie films. There's something I find endlessly amusing about a Russian cop/American cop buddy action film, made at the tail end of the cold war, and featuring Arnie as a Russian. The film kicks off with Mr Schwarzenegger kicking some Mongol arse in the snow, complete with an unnecessarily bare bottom and humourless Russian facial expressions. Cue red-font titles with backwards R's and N's!
Okay, so the plot isn't anything special, and some of the humour seems a little forced (namely Belushi's wisecracks to himself), and yeah, the whole thing's starting to look a little dated. The main idea of the film seems to be to do a East-Meets-West buddy cop film, and this is as far as the idea stretches, opting to eschew any sort of unexpected character dynamics, interesting villains or even a less than paint-by-numbers plot. But it's just great to see Arnie playing a Russian cop (he even speaks Russian!) The film is fairly dark in tone, and there's some excellent location scenes in Russia at the beginning.
The funniest moments in the film come from the Soviets making fun of America (witness the reference to 'gangsters'), but these are too far and few between. There's a satisfactory climax involving two buses playing chicken, and yes, the two protagonists do eventually begrudgingly warm to each other - what a surprise!
Take it as it comes, Red Heat was never going to win any awards, but it's fun enough. I can't help but love the USSR.
HIGHLIGHTS: "How do you Soviets deal with tension and stress?" "Vodka".
Hahahahaha.
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