Good Time

By R.S.

CITY HEAT

Directed by Richard Benjamin Screenplay by Sam O. Brown and Joseph C. Stinson

Meanwhile, back in 1933 ...

Prohibition is winding down. The Marx Brothers are winding up (a clip from Horse Feathers appears in City Heat). And down streets variously garish, mean and vigorously peopled by Richard Benjamin in his richest directorial work yet, stalk two more certified stars, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, also out for a good time in the action-comedy genre.

They find it--Eastwood perhaps more than Reynolds. If ever a screen character was ripe for self-parody, Eastwood's tough plainclothesman is, and he makes the most of his opportunity. Packing a revolver almost as long as a rifle, betraying emotion only with the baleful flick of an eye, he does not seem to have more than 100 words of imperturbable dialogue, but many of them are comically elegant, coming from this source. "Chagrin," for example. And "ilk." My God, one wonders, was Dirty Harry a closet reader all along? Is Clint Eastwood studying the art of Buster Keaton at night school?

As a private eye lucky enough to have that lovely grownup Jane Alexander as his faithfully pining secretary, Reynolds mostly gets to do what he always does:

play a fellow who is not as polished as he thinks he is, but is smooth enough so that heavies in platoon strength take a peculiar delight in roughing him up. This is a part Reynolds has lately taken to playing in his sleep, but he is bright-eyed and alert here.

An audience will have to be in the same condition if it hopes to follow an impossibly convoluted plot in which one mob is murderously desirous of obtaining another's crooked books. But not to worry. The bounce and style of this artfully crowded film will conquer all but the sternest Heat resistance. --R.S.