Friday, August 2, 2013

Movie Review - The Heat

This is the funniest movie I've seen in a long time.

Sandra Bullock is straight-laced FBI agent Sarah Ashburn. She's smarter than every guy in her office and is arrogant enough to not let them forget it. She's up for a promotion, which on merit alone she deserves, but her boss has a dilemma. Every one in the office hates her.

Melissa McCarthy plays tough-as-nails Boston cop Shannon Mullins. She's tougher and smarter than everyone in her precinct and always gets her man. And everyone hates her.

OK, you've seen this movie before. It's a cop buddy movie. There have been a million of them. In my opinion, few of them have been as funny as this. Think Beverly Hills Cop funny.


The plot is as simple as it is familiar. Two odd-balls, with totally different personalities and styles have to work together. At first they fight each other, then they gradually start to understand each other, then they bond, suffer setbacks, split up, save each other's lives and get the bad guys. Did I miss anything?

But even still, it's well done and despite the rocket launcher in the poster, it doesn't go too far off the deep end. It threatened to a couple of times by managed to pull back. The bonding scene almost runs a little too long. The big take down was set up for a bullet-flying blood bath, but stops short. There is one scene which could have been left out completely, involving a choking man in a diner, but that's perhaps the only sour note in the film.

Melissa McCarthy, who I don't really know, was fabulous. She's like Martin Riggs in the first Lethal Weapon movie but a bit more in control. The only work of her's I knew about was the movie Identity Theft which looked awful in the trailers. As for Sandra Bullock, she was great, but, I'd go to a movie feathering her reading excepts from the phone book so I might not be a good judge.

I predict, The Heat II: Balls To The Wall, at a megaplex near you for summer 2015.  And it won't be nearly as good. 


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