ARTS Friday, January 11, 1985 The Michigan Daily Page 5 Clint hot and cold in 'City Heat' By Joshua Bilmes C ity Heat is a puzzling movie. It is an attempt to parody both the gangster movies of fifty years ago and the more recent Dirty Harry/Charles Bronson films. The film succeeds almost perfectly in one respect. The parody is almost always right on the money money. The puzzle is with how few laughs result. The perfect parody of a group of movies so ripe for the picking should result in non-stop laughter. Somehow, such is not the case here. The parody is perfect, but the comedy is one of those which has its moments, and not one that could be called sidesplitting. The plot of this puzzling parody is hardly worth mentioning. It was designed more as a means to an end than an end to itself. Burt Reynolds is Mike Murphy of the Murphy and Swift Detective Agency. Swift pays the rent and the secretary through dealings with various mob types. When one set of mob types kills Swift, Murphy finds himself getting involved in a battle between two rival gangsters played by Rip Torn and Tony Lo Bianco. Clint Eastwood is also on hand as Lt. Speer, a long-time acquaintance of Murphy's from their days together on the force. He, too, is looking for the gangsters. The mixture starts to boil, and the result is City Heat. The story is by Sam Brown, and he wrote the screenplay with Jospeh C. Stinson. Mr. Brown, whose initials are SOB, is a pseudonym for Blake Edwar- ds, who was at one point going to direct the movie. When he left, Richard Ben- jamin of Racing with the Moon and My Favorite Year took the helm. The story he directs is typical for a gangster movie, but carried a bit further. One expects a few molls in a gangster movie, and the movie has two of them. Both are wonderfully mollish; the parody is perfect. They both get kid- napped at one point or another. They both have an excessive concern for their personal appearance. They both tend to preen in front of their man. The exception to some of the above is Jane Alexander, as the Murphy and Swift secretary. She is closer to what you ex- pect to find in Humphrey Bogart's of- fice. She does, however, get kidnapped. What is a gangster movie without tough-talking gangsters? The gangsters here talk plenty tough, even though they all seem like they could use a high school equivalency diploma. You expect shootouts and they, too, are parodied perfectly. After a fairly bloody one in an apartment building, a tenant opens up his door, stares down at a corpse bloodier than raw rack of lamb and asks Eastwood if everything's all right. Even better is a biggie on the streets of Kansas City. Both of the gangsters searching for Burt Reynolds sent out a pair of guys to fetch him. The four start shooting at one another with occasional pot-shots at Reynolds, who attempts to dive from cover to cover. Clint East- wood sits in his car and watches, until someone hits his windshield. Then, out comes the shotgun, and Eastwood quickly picks all the gangsters off. That is, of course, just what you ex- pect from Dirty Harry. The parody of Eastwood's tough cop is perhaps the best thing about the movie. Eastwood is right on the money. His lip is so stiff you would think it had been starched before filming each scene. He remains carefully detached from everything un- til he gets inconvenienced. And then he gets mad. It makes his ire at having too much sugar added to his coffee in Sud- den impact seem like mild annoyance. Eastwood calls Reynolds Short. Reynolds calls Eastwood a neander- thal. Just perfect. Reynolds is not quite as good as Eastwood. His face seems a bit too plastic, the moustache a bit too unreal. Reynolds is playing a role while East- wood is his part. The two do work very well together. They are obviously friends engaged in some friendly com- petition. The scene where they each pull out progressively larger guns is classic. A lot of individual scenes in the movie are classic. The film as a whole is not. Benjamin does add a lot of nice little touches to the movie, but is seems to lack cohesiveness. Perhaps if the plot had been even more far-fetched, or on the opposite side, much tighter and realistic, there would be something to hold all the wonderful parody together. As is, the film is enjoyable, and the moments it does have are undeniably good. It feels empty, though. No one would sing that "the heat is on" about this movie. City Heat is cold, to a cer- tain extent. The molecules need more kinetic energy. They need to bump into each other a little more. The film needs the manic nature of Top Secret or Air- plane. It entertains, but I wish it had just a little bit more. COMING IN FEBRUARY! A-Square Tobacconist is joining Maison Edwards with all their formulas and blends at 9 NICKLES ARCADE Walk-in Cigar Humidor, etc., ALL SMOKERS REQUISITES AND BEST OF ALL... BUZZY AND MIKE WILL BE HERE TO MEET YOU We Validate Your Parking Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood team up as a pair of gangsters in the comedy 'City Heat.' Go ahead, punk, make my day. Records The Replacements-Let It Be (Twin/Tone Records) The Replacements' new Let It Be LP, their sixth release, marks a decided return to the basics of rock 'n roll. It's not new for them, they've been doing it for 4 years now. But now more than ever here is something any rock fan can find solace and shelter with against the synthetic and preprogrammed menagerie of computer age sound, as well as against make-up and leather of dull-thud heavy metal. For anyone who cried in their beer when Springsteen came out with "Dancin' in the Dark", here is an album as timeless as rock it- self,; but oh-so-welcome in these -musically confused times. Let It Be is as mucli a profession of the band's talent as it is homage paid to rock and raw roots. The Replacements show their extreme versatility while at the same time proving they are no gim- mick, just pure rock and roll. And a whole lot of fun. donsider the album's first single, "I Will: Dare." This little ditty incor- porates a subtle blend of country and rock and even a guitar solo by none other than R.E.M's Peter Buck. Before you start screaming about an R.E.M. copy, keep in mind the fun element. It's a whole lot jumpier than anything you're used to, especially R.E.M. And that's just the point: the Replacements take their Byrds heritage, like R.E.M., and work with it. Unlike R.E.M., the Replacements aren't overwhelmed by this influence. They play around with it a little, coming up with something that's as timeless and classic as it is genuine and enjoyable. "I Will Dare" has both the musical integrity and the commercial appeal that make the Replacements what the Village Voice called "The Best Bar Band in America." A song later, and you're hearing the brasher roots, the punk influence of the teen years. "We're Comin' Out" comes across as an energetic piece of punk nostalgia, as a song that echoes the chaos and speed, as well as the style and sound of early Effigies. But once again, here is no cover. A tempo shift ano a jazzy, finger-snapping interlude before a raw-energy finale in the song is no punk contraption, but rather state- of-the art Replacements. 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