Popular reviews

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  Review by Will Sloan 1

  Lazy Sunday afternoon with GOD BURT. This '80s Las Vegas noir absolutely ROCKS and is over 100 minutes of nonstop Burt. We've got Burt choking down liquor and drowning his sorrows. Burt doing gags and deadpan laffs teaching Peter MacNicol to fight. Burt gently but firmly taking no nonsense. Burt doing a running jump-kick and disarming his foes using only edged weapons (he doesn't use guns). Burt winning and losing $100,000 in one night. Burt putting himself in the crosshairs of certain death because it's the right thing to do. Burt looking like a leather chair and sounding like a full-body massage.

  Great, snappy dialogue by God of Screenwriting William Goldman. Would've preferred this with a synth score, but the…

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½ 2

  Ho! Ho! Ho! Its a Christmas List, yo!
  RECOMMENDED BY Jack

  So I guess its very telling of me that throughout the runtime of this film I couldn’t stop hearing Norm McDonalds every time Reynolds spoke. I dunno, something about the tone of the man reminded me of the comedian, he almost talked like a sober version of him.

  Random thoughts aside, this is a nice neo-noir drama with a few actions throw in and all set in Las Vegas during Christmas, so it technically fits the guidelines I set for my marathon. In a way its easy-going tone reminded me a lot to the late work of Louis Malle, especially Atlantic City. William Goldman (Princess Bride, All The President’s…

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  Review by Joshua Dysart ★★★ 4

  Burt Reynolds is laconically dead-eyed throughout. Look at his mug on that poster. That’s it. That’s the only face Burt’s gonna pull for you over the course of the entire runtime. Woman he’s known since she was in braces gets brutally sexually assaulted and beaten? That’s the face he's gonna make. He wins big at the blackjack table? That’s the face. Achieves his lifelong dream? That’s the face (actually the closing scene is quite fun). The rise and the fall, the good and the bad, the dreams and the nightmares of Vegas, pre-LED lit Disneyfication... it’s all the same to him. It’s all gonna come to shit one way or another, nothing’s ever stayed good in his life long enough…

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★★ 3

  Burt hangs out in Vegas during the holidays, looking old, miserable, and charismatic. Features a wild finale in which Burt turns into a killing machine.

  Directed by nobodies because Burt was too powerful.

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  Review by laird ★★★★ 1

  aka Not Leaving Las Vegas
  aka What Jack Reacher Should Have Been More Like

  Makes good use of the sleazy Vegas backdrop to tell the Shane Blackish story of a deadbeat toughguy (it even takes place at Christmas and has a twisted father-son surrogate relationship). Maybe this is from the source novel, but the structure has characters and plot threads disappear for long chunks of time giving it a herky-jerky feel. The scenes of the perpetual loser gambling addict clash tonally and logically with the scenes of the same man as a Chuck Norris one-man-army badass, but it's all sharply written and highly entertaining.

  Also, it's plenty nasty. A woman is raped (100% off-screen) with a gun and wants revenge via castration. "I want his nuts in my hand." Reynolds gives a guy a compound fracture at his knee (100% on-screen)...From the author of The Princess Bride.

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  Review by Misha Beattie ★★

  Shoutout dads who run vice in Lexington, KY.

  Scripted like a soft neo-noir, with some anachronistically hardboiled dialogue and modern ‘80s violence and vulgarity. Shot and scored like a neo-noir parody. Between Heat and Farewell, My Lovely, Dick Richards proved to be cartoonishly untalented; dogshit taste, no eye, poor instincts. But Burt is still a steady presence and Karen Young is solid in a small, but instrumental, role.

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  Review by Brian Saur ★★★½ 3

  Surprisingly good and gritty little neo-noir with Burt. And who woulda thought that he and Peter MacNicol would be so good together? One of Burt's underrated best.

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★

  a 70s character study produced too late in the 80s for it to avoid coming across as navel-gazing and adrift in an ocean of neon. lots of good las vegas burn-out vibes, terribly-directed fight scenes, a great script by the legendary william goldman being played by a gang of awful actors, burt reynolds doing some laconic sleepwalking.

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  Review by Jake Isgar 1

  Brutal '80s action, tough guy pulp intrigue, broken-down gambling drama, and a buddy comedy all slam together in a way that's as jagged as it is exciting. Leathery Dad Hero Burt Reynolds wears a leather jacket in Las Vegas of all places as he scrums for cash to retire in Venice. A hopelessly nebbish Peter MacNichol enlists Reynolds to coach him on how to be brave; that goofball Pygmalion plot comes in a close second favorite to the stretch where Reynolds gambles away a chance at a new life.

  This can easily turn into one of those write-ups where I list all of the minute things/moments that make this picture a total rager so I'll leave with this: at one point, Burt douses a thug in kerosene before kicking a hanging light, setting him on fucking fire.

  See this movie now.

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  Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★½

  Had watched the Statham version (Wild Card, essentially a remake of this) first, and it didn't quite work for me, although it was an odd mix, worth seeing, with action scenes that were particularly good --and this (Not to be confused with the Mann film, har har) goes the other way, with action scenes that are short and to the point, but rely on slow motion a little too much, and where, if you struck out a couple of lines of dialogue, you'd be forgiven for not having any idea that Burt Reynolds is supposed to be maybe the most lethal guy on the planet --this is a middle-aged movie where the most lethal guy on the planet just wants…

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  Review by Gregory Kent ★★★

  1986 Ranked

  Sleazy and over-the-top, Heat is also weirdly grounded. There's some extended gambling drama scenes, some odd pseudo-father/son stuff, and some (somewhat) understated PTSD references. But it is also grimy, both in its Vegas setting, how it is shot, and subject matter. The action also some filthy action, whether it is burying someone in bricks, slicing a face with a credit card, or using gasoline and a jump kicked lightbulb to set someone on fire. Pretty greasy and bonkers.

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  Review by Nachtwaechter ★★★★ 9

  Ja, ich hab in der Vergangenheit viel auf den Film geschimpft!
  Sehr viel.

  Zum einen war ich damals, bei seiner „Premiere“ (?) im Free-TV bei RTL viel zu jung für diese Art von Alterswerk eines sich im karrieretechnisch unaufhörlich m Sinkflug befindlichen ehemaligen Actionstars. Burt Reynolds war für mich „Bandit“ oder „J.J McClure“, kein abgehalfteter Ex-Irgendwas, der mehr redet denn handelt.
  Damit kommen wir auch gleich zum anderen, denn über die Szene, in der ausgerechnet Reynolds seine nicht vorhanden Nahkampfähigkeiten mit unpassenden Verfremdungseffekten zur Schau stellt musste ich damals schon lauthals lachen. Sie brannte sich so sehr ein, das ich bei jeder passenden wie unpassenden Gelegenheit sie immer wieder als Referenz für die Drittklassigkeit des gesamten Streifens aus der Mottenkiste…