The Heat (2013)
Directed by Paul Feig
Uptight and straight-laced, FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn is a methodical investigator with a reputation for excellence--and hyper-arrogance. Shannon Mullins, one of Boston P.D.'s "finest," is foul-mouthed and has a very short fuse, and uses her gut instinct and street smarts to catch the most elusive criminals. Neither has ever had a partner, or a friend for that matter. When these two wildly incompatible law officers join forces to bring down a ruthless drug lord, they become the last thing anyone expected: buddies.
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Not long afterwards came Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines in “Running Scared” (1986) and an inspired pairing of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover for the first “Lethal Weapon” film (1987) that really reinforced the loose cannon-conservative lawman match-up.
In the vein of ’80s action classics like 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon, The Heat is a modern rendition on the buddy cop film.
Paying homage to its genre roots, The Heat opens with a bouncy '70s-cop-show credit sequence, and follows it by twice mastering the vanishing art of the efficient character introduction; in just a few short minutes, it proves itself as deft as even the likes of Lethal Weapon at nailing down exactly who these two wildly different characters are.
In "The Heat" we're closer to full-on action mode, akin to "48 Hrs." or "Lethal Weapon" territory than a spoofy affair on the order of the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg movie "The Other Guys."
The characters deal with things Lethal Weapon's Murtaugh and Riggs never would have had to worry about.
They're set loose on a flimsy, Lethal Weapon-y drug case, an excuse for the ol' odd-couple tropes to play out: the uncool Ashburn needs to learn not to be so uptight, while the hard Mullins needs to learn to let down her emotional guard.
Not long afterwards came Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines in “Running Scared” (1986) and an inspired pairing of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover for the first “Lethal Weapon” film (1987) that really reinforced the loose cannon-conservative lawman match-up.
Dippold was initially inspired by the buddy-cop comedy Running Scared, which includes a montage of hot babes riding on the back of Billy Crystal's and Gregory Hines' scooters.
When he was in town last month, director Paul Feig confessed that the movie’s inspiration came to Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold while watching the 1986 cable staple Running Scared, which starred Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines as a couple of mismatched Chicago detectives stumbling onto a totally unremarkable mystery and bantering their way through a brisk two hours.
In “The Heat,” Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy put a feminine spin on the buddy copy film, a male-dominated sub-genre made popular by movies like “48 Hours” and “Bad Boys.”
Bullock and/or McCarthy are in every scene, driving the film in the way that Nick Nolte & Eddie Murphy drove “48 Hours” or Charles Grodin & Robert DeNiro drove “Midnight Run.”
They’re as tough as any male pairing of the genre — Gibson and Glover in “Lethal Weapon,” Murphy and Nolte in “48 Hours” — but they bring a strong “girlfriends” feeling to the table.
“48 Hours” blended the kind of rapid-fire jokes, serious shootouts, and blatant disregard for “by the book” police work that’s since become a trademark of such movies.
The investigation leads her onto the turf of detective Shannon Mullins (McCarthy), a rumpled, tough, law-enforcement force-of-nature, who terrifies everyone in her precinct from her captain (Tom Wilson, aka Biff from “Back to the Future”) on down to the lowliest street thugs.
The only people more scared of her than Beantown’s lowlifes are Beantown’s finest, including her boss, Captain Woods (Tom Wilson, Back to the Future’s Biff Tannen).
She’s so irritable that her boss (Tom Wilson of “Back to the Future”) is as afraid of her as her favorite drug dealing perp (Spoken Reasons is this caricature’s stage name).
Look for Tom Wilson (Biff from “Back to the Future”) as Officer Mullins’ boss.
Biff from the Back to the Future trilogy) as McCarthy’s weak-kneed boss.
A lot of screen space is given to let the two stars develop, but notable inclusions to the supporting cast are Thomas F Wilson (forever recognisable as the villain Biff from Back to the Future) as a lame police captain and Michael Rapaport as McCarthy's equally verbose sibling.
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And many combine those elements, resulting in films such as "48 Hours," "Bad Boys," "Rush Hour," "Men in Black" and so on.
Since then, fans of the relatively new sub-genre have enjoyed the pairing of such opposites as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour,” 1998), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Hot Fuzz,” 2007), and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (“The Other Guys,” 2010).
Directed by Paul Feig, who also helmed the surprise 2011 smash hit “Bridesmaids,” and scripted by Katie Dippold of “Parks and Recreation,” “The Heat” is derivative of any number of mismatched buddy movies from “48 HRS.” and “Midnight Run” to the “Rush Hour” films.
In fact, it follows the same basic formula of movies like “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Rush Hour.”
That bar sequence was just one of the parts that reminded me of The Other Guys, a far superior send-up of buddy-cop comedies.
In "The Heat" we're closer to full-on action mode, akin to "48 Hrs." or "Lethal Weapon" territory than a spoofy affair on the order of the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg movie "The Other Guys."
Feig’s indifference to craft hurts the movie—to name a counterexample, Adam McKay’s similar The Other Guys could pass as an impressively crisp actioner even without the comedy—but he knows funny, and he gives his actors plenty of room to work.
She’s the crassness of Mark Wahlberg in “The Other Guys” paired with the laughing at authority personality trait of Hutch in “Starsky and Hutch”.
Since then, fans of the relatively new sub-genre have enjoyed the pairing of such opposites as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour,” 1998), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Hot Fuzz,” 2007), and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (“The Other Guys,” 2010).
Considering female-led comedies though, the comparison situation Bridesmaids drew to The Hangover absolutely pertains to The Heat, which certainly gave me more of a laugh-induced belly-ache than The Other Guys did on its opening night.
Here (not unlike in Edgar Wright's similarly themed Hot Fuzz, where a love interest was written out of the final script to allow more room for the bromance) the focus is entirely on the central odd couple of Bullock and McCarthy, who spark up a spiky, near-faultless comedic chemistry.
Because Feig’s directorial style is a better match for TV than film – with regard to how shots are framed and edited together – The Heat lacks the necessary cinematic kinesthetics that could’ve given the humorous beats more punch and elevated the satire of the intentional low-key climax (like what Edgar Wright did in Hot Fuzz).
Since then, fans of the relatively new sub-genre have enjoyed the pairing of such opposites as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour,” 1998), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Hot Fuzz,” 2007), and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (“The Other Guys,” 2010).
“The Heat” lightly spoofs the buddy-cop genre (see also: “Hot Fuzz,” which does it better and with more directorial pizzazz), and the script’s crudity toys with Bullock’s sweetheart persona, long fostered by the slew of milquetoast crap in her filmography.
If you want to look for a movie that is similar in tone to “The Heat,” I would harken back to “Beverly Hills Cop” as it is also hilariously profane and uses violence to ground the movie and raise the stakes, but not so much that it takes you out of the movie.
More a female-bonding “Beverly Hills Cop” transplanted to Boston than another raunchy and raucous “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” is funny and entertaining enough to make fans of Melissa ?McCarthy (“Bridesmaids”) and Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) happy.
The legacy is a long one: "Beverly Hills Cop," "Tango & Cash," "Starsky & Hutch," "48 Hrs.," "Men in Black," "Turner & Hooch," "Miami Vice."
In fact, it follows the same basic formula of movies like “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Rush Hour.”
It’s no Beverly Hills Cop, but The Heat does spend a decent amount of time with its cops ‘n robbers plot — bizarre, because it’s such a nothing story.
“The Heat” is never “Beverly Hills Cop” with women.
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Paul Feig’s new R-rated cop comedy The Heat is not exactly something audiences haven’t seen before; the boorish, slobby and foul-mouthed beat cop Melissa McCarthy paired with the neat-freak buttoned-down promotion-hungry Fed Sandra Bullock recalls everything from 48 Hrs. to The Odd Couple.
Also not a small hint of "The Odd Couple."
Before you can say "The Odd Couple", the two are paired up and bickering as they slowly begin to bond with each other on the way to tracking down the bad guys.
With the exception of the 1988 comedy “Feds” (and to a certain degree, the “Charlie’s Angels” films), the buddy cop movie has been an exclusively male-dominated genre.
This actually isn’t true (“Feds,” starring Rebecca DeMornay and Mary Gross came out in the 80s, and movies like “Taxi” and “Theodore Rex” were arguably buddy cop pictures that featured a woman in one of the buddy roles).