One Of The State

Among the many things these days that remind me how we used to be a proper country, one of them is the realization that Walter Hill films were once a regular thing. We really should be grateful for what we had. At their very best they make up some of the most memorable and unique action films around so while they may not all work and my love for some is stronger than others, I’m still thankful for what we got. It’s a body of work that includes his directorial efforts along with several early memorable screenplays not to mention his close involvement with the ALIEN franchise and so much of it still contains a power in the way they combine his stripped down storytelling techniques with an unabashed comic book style, a harsh kind of pulp that offers both action and edgy comedy in a heavily stylized vein, a mashing up of Howard Hawks and Sam Peckinpah but also a third element which was his own unique point of view. There’s a sincerity always felt in each film which is one of their greatest strengths and Hill doesn’t deconstruct the genre he’s working in so much as construct what he wants an action movie created by him to be. He makes films that have no time for any bullshit. Some might simply call them modern day westerns but there’s more to it than that and the approach is always completely no-nonsense, delivered by a man who doesn’t fuck around with clear-cut plotting crossed with total filmmaking confidence. Not to mention how in plenty of photos showing him directing he’s wearing sunglasses, which always seemed very cool. And these days nothing seems to say as much about his sense of pure storytelling economy like the fact that he’s never directed anything with a running time over two hours. The film begins, makes its statement and he walks away. That’s a Walter Hill film.

The very best of his work displays the beauty found in his no-nonsense yet still stylized approach whether it’s THE DRIVER, THE WARRIORS, THE LONG RIDERS and of course the smash hit that was 48 HRS. which could easily be called one of the most influential movies of the ‘80s. Among some of the others, STREETS OF FIRE may be the most Walter Hill film of all, the purest expression of the way he sees the world, and it’s the one with the devoted following now but speaking as one of the biggest JOHNNY HANDSOME defenders out there I’m still waiting for that cult to emerge. And even if I’ve never been one to make a big case for his lone comedy BREWSTER’S MILLIONS, for example, or maybe LAST MAN STANDING, his western/gangster YOJIMBO/FISTFUL OF DOLLARS hybrid starring Bruce Willis which didn’t work for me much at all even if there are times when I can appreciate the purity revealed in his approach. But 1995’s vastly underappreciated WILD BILL is close to being great and I also remember having a blast seeing his 2002 prison boxing film UNDISPUTED in a nearly empty theater. Then there are those times when his films really do feel like Walter Hill trying to make what he thinks people want from a Walter Hill film, like how the 1988 buddy cop movie RED HEAT is in some ways pure Walter Hill but it doesn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite Walter Hill.

The pieces of RED HEAT are all there and the thing plays but the film never fully catches fire so instead it cruises along, hitting all the beats you expect it to as the bullets fly and bodies crash through windows, with lots of broken glass everywhere. It crosses the basic idea of Don Siegel’s COOGAN’S BLUFF about a cop from elsewhere coming to the big city with what can easily be called an unabashed redo of the basic 48 HRS. formula, going back to the buddy cop setup of clashing personalities in his previous hit which is fine since redoing ideas seemed to work out for Howard Hawks more than a few times. It just feels like the bones of the story are all there in RED HEAT without giving enough of the meat, even though the film tries its best to make it seem like there’s plenty to chew on. Opening in June 1988, just one week after Peter Hyams’ THE PRESIDIO which was another cop film that in the context of summer releases could be called underachieving, this was all roughly a month before the entire formula would be upended by the arrival of DIE HARD, a hit that no one saw coming at this point. Walter Hill wasn’t really the type of director to make the sort of action extravaganza designed to build to the biggest explosion imaginable, but his films still have a certain energy much of the time. RED HEAT does too, at least partly. Of course, if you’re going to rank all the films made by a certain director then something is going to have to fall in the middle. Maybe that’s where RED HEAT lands.

When Moscow police captain Ivan Danko (Arnold Schwarzenegger) goes after mobster Viktor Rostavili (Ed O’Ross) his partner is killed and Viktor flees to the U.S., specifically Chicago, where he is soon arrested on a minor charge. Danko is sent to retrieve Viktor and bring him back, with specific instructions not to let the Americans know the full scope of his crimes. Once there he is met by Chicago police detective Art Riznik (James Belushi) but an attempt to transfer Rostavili to the airport for the flight home results in Riznik’s own partner being killed and Viktor on the run so the two men are soon forced to team up to capture him with Danko determined to keep the Americans from learning the real reason for him tracking Viktor down.

On the surface RED HEAT is the star vehicle it’s meant to be, with lots of continuous action along with a pairing of two disparate personalities designed to clash as they make their way through a plot that is continually attempting to seem busier than it needs to be as if trying to distract the audience from realizing all this has been done before. This is, after all, a film where the partners of both lead characters are killed before the inevitable team-up, not to mention one of them killing the bad guy’s brother, as if the film couldn’t think of anything else bad that might happen to get things going. The plot (story by Hill, screenplay by Harry Kleiner and Hill & Troy Kennedy Martin) hits all the necessary beats but in a way that makes the movie feel like it cruises along as opposed to breaking out from the formula and doing anything even slightly unexpected. The Walter Hill style means no fat and because of this the film never feels like it’s wasting any time, even if the nature of the plotting means it takes a little longer for the two leads to team up than we’d prefer. As much as it’s a part of the buddy cop formula, what sets this one apart is a more grounded, low-key approach to things although whether anyone goes to a movie like this for actual serious issues is debatable.

It’s an ‘80s Walter Hill film with all the expected elements from him—lots of neon, barking police captains, sharp girls, snarky waitresses, a city at night which seems to be all scuzzy hotel rooms and parking garages. The attention-grabbing opening set in a Russian bathhouse filled with naked men weightlifting, plus a few women scattered in there, does feel like a more heightened, comic-strip approach as if part of what now feels like Film Twitter-approved ridiculousness coming from the introduction of an almost-naked Schwarzenegger, panning up his entire body in a moment that seems perfectly designed for the star's reveal leading to a fight in the snow complete with ultra-loud punches to the face. This all builds to the discovery a few scenes later of a stash of cocaine hidden in an artificial leg he breaks off and the film never quite becomes this much fun again, even as the action kicks off so when the plot settles down in Chicago it becomes more about the neo-noirish Walter Hill world, maybe a little scuzzier than usual. Some of this is interesting, with what feels like an endless night focusing on the moodiness and crummy, aimless lives the characters lead, the way Danko doesn’t seem to have much at all beyond his work and pet parakeet he has an alarm set for feeding and the way Riznik’s captain talks about him he’s apparently close to being fired or suspended or something. Neither one of them seems to have anybody of substance in their lives, no girlfriend for either of them to call on the phone and yell at. Even the dancer played by Gina Gershon who has a secret connection to Viktor has her own depressing reasons for getting involved with all this. Peter Boyle’s police captain with an office that has a fish tank and recordings of calming sounds playing seems to have the only idea for how to deal with everything around him but even he suspects it might all be futile. This makes for a grounded, somewhat serious vibe even with the occasional wisecrack with cops going up against the lower classes that can’t get ahead and no one particularly happy about it which makes RED HEAT more interesting than it might have been but not as fun or crazy in a way that might have helped make it truly memorable. The film always seems intent on getting to the necessary action beats but doesn’t seem to spend much time figuring out a way to do something with them that would be genuinely surprising.

For Schwarzenegger, this film comes during that stretch between the release of the first two TERMINATORs where his career was in an interesting place, already a superstar yet not quite in the stratosphere he would reach in the ‘90s where it felt like each of his action films was an attempt to make the biggest movie of its kind ever. Ivan Reitman’s TWINS, the very definition of a formulaic ‘80s comedy, was a big hit at the end of 1988 but it feels like his most rewatchable films during this period are the ones that successfully make the tone of the film as giant as his screen presence, namely the two he did for producer Joel Silver, COMMANDO and PREDATOR, then later in TOTAL RECALL for Paul Verhoeven. John Irvin’s RAW DEAL from 1986 is the one that never got much attention but it doesn’t play all that bad now and is maybe the only Arnold movie during this stretch that, R rating or no, doesn’t feel pitched towards kids at all. RED HEAT falls somewhere in between all this and one of the most interesting things about it is the way it presents him in the frame, first in uniform then later in the blue-green suit that Riznik says makes him look like Gumby. In some ways it’s an alternate, more vulnerable version of his stoicism in the first TERMINATOR, made more interesting when learning how Hill recommended Arnold closely study the Greta Garbo performance in Ernst Lubitsch’s NINOTCHKA where she plays a Soviet officer arriving in the West for the first time, so if Garbo ever had a scene set in a crappy hotel with a coin-operated TV that plays porno, Arnold’s reaction is likely similar to what hers would have been. This makes me wish there were more Lubitsch to the film which allows him to approach the role with a subtlety that he didn’t always get to do elsewhere and the result feels like he’s really playing a character here.

The sequences set in Russia were mostly filmed in Hungary and Austria with some footage actually grabbed in Red Square, the first such Hollywood production to be given permission to do so (“…but why?” asked Leonard Maltin in his star-and-a-half capsule review) and this film happened not too long before the wall came down so looking at it now years later the portrayal of Russia as filled with organized crime does have some added interest and by having the Georgian bad guy Viktor team up with a gang of black militants whose leader is behind bars, the film seems to be drawing a line between the underclasses of the two countries. When Danko is challenged to hold onto steaming hot rock just removed from the first being told, “If you work with steel, you should be used to the heat,” it’s pretty much the first line in the films as if saying right off the bat how this world is divided between the people struggling as much as anyone and those who refuse to acknowledge the differences. Each character in the movie seems to be just trying to get by, up against all the faceless higher ups in charge. Even the most powerful crime lord in the movie is already in jail. There’s no kingpin here, just the Russians trying to keep the influence of America, in the form of the drugs Viktor wants to bring over, from getting there for as long as possible as if fully aware that the end of the USSR is approaching fast which has more to it than the outright cartoon that was ROCKY IV. Even Garbo became seduced by the west in NINOTCHKA, something that never comes close to happening for Ivan Danko.

Walter Hill always did know how to stage action. If you want a shootout in a stairwell, he’s your guy, he knows how to present these things with clarity which is refreshing now in an old school way along with two stars who always seem up for it physically even if not much about all the action feels particularly unique until the intensity of the bus chase climax. All of which makes me think that RED HEAT is… (Jack Donaghy voice) fine. It’s a little too much of the 48 HRS. formula and then ANOTHER 48 HRS. which came two years later feels a little too much like a continuation of this along with the McGuffin in the form of a locker key that never becomes very interesting even though the film seems to try awfully hard to convince us that it takes a lot of legwork to track down where it fits. The film is never dull but also never very distinctive while being a little too nasty and not fun enough with maybe a few too many sacrificial lambs, to the point that when one person turns up alive after it seemed likely they were dispensed with the appearance almost feels like a studio note along the lines of, “We can’t kill off EVERY minor character in this movie!” The James Horner score opens and closes in a classical style inspired by, if not just lifted from, Prokofiev then everything in the middle is basically the same sort of orchestral licks with lots of sax, flutes, electronics and steel drums he previously used in things like 48 HRS, GORKY PARK and COMMANDO as the composer tended to do during that decade. It’s fair to say that few things provide the feel of ‘80s urban action as what James Horner planted in our brains with this sound, music that always drives the movie with lots of forward momentum and it’s fun to listen to but is still another element that makes the film seem like something that’s been done before.

The film has the right pieces but doesn’t do as much with them as it could so the overall effect doesn’t stick in the brain as much, not always knowing what it needs to spend time with just like a few late plot points that get rushed through, as if the film has decided it just wants to get to the climax quicker. Nothing wrong with wanting to tighten the pace but it does make some things feel a little abrupt. There’s a review on Letterboxd which simply reads “Needed more Gina Gershon,” and I can’t disagree with that. One other piece the movie doesn’t have is any sort of equivalent of the country-western bar scene with Eddie Murphy in 48 HRS. that helped turn him into an immediate superstar. I’m not sure what that scene would be here, or even which star that would focus on, but it is an indication that the movie is missing that one unique element people would remember, a scene, a moment, a laugh that makes everything else flow together and without that it just isn’t as special. A film like this needs the plot, the action and the characters but it also needs those moments that make the characters memorable, the moments you remember more than anything else and without them the movie doesn’t stick.

That’s the thing. There needs to be more. More surprising action, more edgy comedy, more tension, something different for Arnold to do, something that could have done even more with Belushi, something to help this stand out and be unique. Looking up a few things, it turns out before Belushi hands over a Magnum .45 to him (“That’s the most powerful handgun in the world. Why do you think Dirty Harry uses it?” “Who is Dirty Harry?”) that the Soviet-made gun Arnold uses is fictional, go figure, but maybe something even more different than that. Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy were at each other’s throats all through 48 HRS. Nolte growled, Eddie was raw and the tension between the two of them made it explode. That movie is on fire. In comparison, Schwarzenegger and Belushi go well together although it is done in a much more low-key style and even when they start yelling at each other it never quite feels like they would come to blows. Having said that, the scene in a diner where they get to know each other and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the film, each of them displaying their vulnerability in a way that feels completely natural and Belushi’s protest to the waitress about how he’s gotten his coffee the perfect color is the sort of thing I’ve thought of more than a few times while pouring coffee for myself over the years. In the middle of all this, the quiet in this one scene is a welcome moment of reflection. A few jokes throughout click, some more than others, but it feels like Hill didn’t want the film to be funnier or more cartoony even if that sort of thing might have stuck in the head a little more. There’s a slight recurring exchange, too subtle to be called a running gag, of Arnold occasionally saying, “Thank you,” followed by a “You’re welcome,” coming from Belushi, which is nice and the two of them underplay the moments well, but also says something about how much the film keeps things restrained. The climactic bus chase through Chicago is fun and executed well but still not that different, although it does manage to get the job done. The film also knows not to waste time at the very end when wrapping things up, which at least feels appropriate since all it needs is one last moment with the leads to show us who they are. People are fixed in their ways. Danko doesn’t change, Riznik doesn’t change and the best that can happen is a moment of acknowledged connection as they cross paths before moving on.

Calling this performance Arnold Schwarzenegger doing Garbo because of the NINOTCHKA inspiration might be a stretch, but when he crushes a bug crawling on the registry in that hotel and silently looks up at the clerk it feels like this performance is about Arnold figuring out how little he needed to do at least until the climax when the character lets his full Russian ferocity be heard. So much of a Schwarzenegger performance is found in the way a film figures out how to use him and Hill is clearly always searching for the balance between letting other actors respond to him and the quiet vulnerability they’re willing to show peeking through. I always did like James Belushi (to this day, I think ‘Jim’ sounds better) and I like him here, even if the film never quite allows him to go crazy in a way that would balance against the stoicism of his co-star. Belushi plays the character rather than the high concept of the movie and it feels like he’s more of an actor than a star which lends it credibility but maybe also adds to the muted effect it all has, even as he knows how to play certain quieter moments for the right sort of sly humor.

Ed O’Ross (who got another big part in ANOTHER 48 HRS. a few years later plus, among other things, a recurring role on SIX FEET UNDER) as Viktor works the close-ups he’s given well and has the right intensity but there’s only so much to do with this bad guy. Peter Boyle gets a great intro then doesn’t do much outside of being annoyed at everything and barking orders at people. Gina Gershon, the very epitome of a tough and sultry Walter Hill girl, at least gives the movie a different kind of energy when she turns up and I wish she was around longer—she’s the one girl in the picture with a substantial role and the number of official stills with her indicates they wanted to make it seem like she had a bigger part than she does. Brent Jennings, who also later had a much bigger role in ANOTHER 48 HRS, is the kingpin behind bars, Brion James from both 48 HRS. has one scene as a snitch, Pruitt Taylor Vince is the desk clerk at the scuzzy hotel and Richard Bright, Al Neri in all three GODFATHERs, is Belushi’s partner. Maybe the best performance in the entire film is Larry, not yet Laurence, Fishburne in a part that isn’t showy enough to say he steals the film but whenever he walks into a scene his very presence shifts the focus of things, bringing a sly and completely unexpected rhythm to what he does, taking a part that doesn't appear to be very much on the page and making the movie better just by being there.

At the very least, it’s probably better than THE PRESIDIO but if someone has a strong opinion on this in defense of Peter Hyams I’m willing to listen. If RED HEAT had been a bigger hit ($34 million, which was better than THE PRESIDIO but not as good as THE DEAD POOL which came a few weeks later) then maybe there would have been a sequel but in the ending it does have the two main characters seem to know they’ll never see each other again and that’s what sticks with me much more than any sort of muted triumph felt. As for when I saw this, my memory is that it was on opening night with some friends at the White Plains Galleria but barely have any memory of it beyond that. And now this is just one more movie on Blu-ray that I picked up used for some reason which contains several typos in the subtitles during one scene with Russian dialogue, but what are you gonna do. All these years later, I’m at least still thinking about the films of Walter Hill, even if this isn’t one of the first that comes to mind. For that matter, I still haven’t seen his most recent, the 2022 western DEAD FOR A DOLLAR, and I can’t even explain this. Maybe it’s just nice to know that there’s still one more out there. But the final moment of this film, as James Belushi watches Arnold Schwarzenegger leave is, it should be said, a beautiful piece of staging and cutting, maybe of the kind that only a director like Walter Hill knows how to do, saying everything that the two characters didn’t know how to express. You are who you are, no matter how much the world changes around you. That doesn’t stop. Life goes on.