City Heat
Encyclopedia
City Heat is a 1984 American action-comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 starring Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...

 and Burt Reynolds
Burt Reynolds
Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds, Jr. is an American actor. Some of his memorable roles include Bo 'Bandit' Darville in Smokey and the Bandit, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Bobby "Gator" McCluskey in White Lightning and sequel Gator, Paul Crewe and Coach Nate Scarborough in The Longest Yard and its...

. The film was released in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 in December 1984. The pairing of Eastwood and Reynolds in a Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...

-era action-comedy seemed to give the film the potential to be a hit. However, the film only earned $38,300,000 at the box office, although it still made money on its $25,000,000 budget.

Plot

Set in Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

 in 1933, a police lieutenant known simply by his last name, Speer, is acquainted with a former cop turned private eye named Mike Murphy. Speer and Murphy served on the force together and were once good friends, but now can't stand each other.

On a rainy night, Speer comes into a diner for coffee. Two goons arrive, looking for Murphy. They pounce the minute Murphy arrives, starting a fistfight. Speer, no fan of Murphy's, decides to stay out of the fight until a goon causes him to spill his coffee. Both goons are thrown through the front door. Murphy sarcastically thanks Speer for saving his life.

The two rivals have eyes for Murphy's beautiful secretary Addy. She loves both and proves it when, after tenderly kissing Murphy goodbye, goes on a date with Speer. Murphy has a new romantic interest, a rich socialite named Caroline Howley, but finds himself unable to commit himself. Speer and Addy go to a boxing match at which the mob boss Primo Pitt is present. Murphy's partner Dehl Swift is also there, and seems to be in cahoots with Pitt and his gang. Swift is in possession of a briefcase whose contents are the target of Pitt's gang.

Swift is confronted by Pitt's thugs at his apartment and is shot to death. A thug opens the briefcase but there's nothing inside. He picks up Swift's body and throws it out the window, where it lands on the roof of Speer's parked car (which is occupied by the horrified Addy). Murphy vows revenge on Pitt for killing his partner. He asks Speer for assistance and they form a reluctant alliance. One of the witnesses to Swift's murder is nightclub singer Ginny Lee. After watching a movie, Lee is confronted by Pitt's thugs outside the theatre. As she tries to escape, she is hit by a car and seriously injured.

Murphy and Speer vow to avenge her as well as Swift. Final showdowns occur in a warehouse, where Speer humorously pulls out a weapon larger than Murphy's, and in a brothel, where Murphy shows up in costume to rescue a kidnapped Caroline. In the end, the men again have become friends, at least until a casual remark leads to them stepping outside and bickering, face to face.

Cast

  • Clint Eastwood
    Clint Eastwood
    Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...

     as Lieutenant Speer
  • Burt Reynolds
    Burt Reynolds
    Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds, Jr. is an American actor. Some of his memorable roles include Bo 'Bandit' Darville in Smokey and the Bandit, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Bobby "Gator" McCluskey in White Lightning and sequel Gator, Paul Crewe and Coach Nate Scarborough in The Longest Yard and its...

     as Mike Murphy, P.I.
  • Jane Alexander
    Jane Alexander
    Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

     as Addy
  • Madeline Kahn
    Madeline Kahn
    Madeline Kahn was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comedic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.-Early life:...

     as Caroline Howley
  • Rip Torn
    Rip Torn
    Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn, Jr. , is an American actor of stage, screen and television.Torn received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1983 film Cross Creek. His work includes the role of Artie, the producer, on The Larry Sanders Show, for which he was nominated...

     as Primo Pitt
  • Irene Cara
    Irene Cara
    Irene Cara is an American singer and actress. Cara won an Academy Award in 1984 in the category of Best Original Song for co-writing "Flashdance... What a Feeling." She is also known for her recording of the song "Fame", and she also starred in the 1980 film Fame.She married Hollywood stuntman...

     as Ginny Lee
  • Richard Roundtree
    Richard Roundtree
    Richard Roundtree is an American actor and former fashion model. He is best known for his portrayal of private detective John Shaft in the 1971 film Shaft and in its two sequels, Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa .-Personal life:Born in New Rochelle, New York, Richard Roundtree graduated from...

     as Diehl Swift, P.I.
  • Tony Lo Bianco
    Tony Lo Bianco
    Tony Lo Bianco is an American actor in films and television.Lo Bianco was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a taxi driver. He is known for his roles in the cult films The Honeymoon Killers, God Told Me To, and The French Connection...

     as Leon Coll
  • William Sanderson
    William Sanderson
    William Sanderson is an American character actor.-Early life:Sanderson was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to an elementary school teacher mother and a landscape designer father...

     as Lonnie Ash
  • Nicholas Worth
    Nicholas Worth
    Nicholas Worth was an American character actor who portrayed General Marzaq and Premier Romanov in Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer series of games, Emperor: Battle for Dune, and also voice-acted as Colonel Bulba/Mr. Jones in Freedom Fighters...

     as Troy Roker
  • Robert Davi
    Robert Davi
    Robert John Davi is an American actor and singer. He has played such roles as Vietnam veteran and Special Agent Johnson in Die Hard, the villainous Jake Fratelli in The Goonies, and Al Torres in Showgirls...

     as Nino
  • Art LaFleur
    Art LaFleur
    -Life and career:La Fleur was born in Gary, Indiana. He played football in 1962 as a redshirt at the University of Kentucky under Coach Charlie Bradshaw as chronicled in a 2007 book, The Thin Thirty....

     as a bruiser
  • Jack Nance
    Jack Nance
    Marvin John Nance , known professionally as Jack Nance and occasionally credited as John Nance, was an American actor of stage and screen, primarily starring in offbeat or avant-garde productions...

     as Aram Strossell, the bookkeeper

Production

Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

 wrote the script, which was initially entitled Kansas City Blues. Edwards was the original director of the film but was fired early on and replaced with Richard Benjamin
Richard Benjamin
Richard Benjamin is an American actor and film director. He has starred in a number of productions, including Goodbye, Columbus , based on the novella by Philip Roth, and Westworld .-Life and career:...

. He retained co-writing credit under the pseudonym Sam O. Brown (The initials S.O.B. being a reference to his earlier film). Eastwood was cast as the lead, and received a $4 million salary.

Filming began in February 1984, and on the first day, Reynolds was accidentally hit in the face with a metal chair during the filming of a fight scene. His jaw was broken and he was restricted to a liquid diet, causing him to lose over 30 pounds by the time filming wrapped. His condition made headlines in the tabloids, who suspected he had AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

.

Soundtrack

Clint Eastwood is one of the pianists heard on the film's jazz-oriented soundtrack. Eastwood is a real-life jazz aficionado.

Release

City Heat was released in United States theaters in December 1984. It eventually grossed $38 million at the United States box office.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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