“City Heat” is a gangster comedy that has one of the messiest scripts I’ve ever seen as although this film isn’t a parody it seems to apply the same respect of logic, physics and common sense. I heavily recommend you skip “City Heat”.

“City Heat” is set in the 1930s and centres around a tough, policeman named Lieutenant Speer (Clint Eastwood “Sudden Impact”, “Tightrope”) and a wisecracking, private eye named Mike Murphy (Burt Reynolds “Hooper”, “Smokey and the Bandit”) that despite being once partners hate each other but they find themselves once again working alongside one another. Aside from that I really can’t tell you much about the story as the film didn’t reel me in at all.

Burt Reynolds is not funny as Murphy and the character felt just like a very exaggerated version of many other of the actor’s screen personas. I was very displeased with Clint Eastwood’s work as Speer and the character felt again exaggerated version of many other of the actor’s screen personas. The two have very little chemistry and feel entirely wrong together. Nobody else left any real impressions on me either so I can safely say I was displeased with this aspect of the movie.

“City Heat” is a fishing rod without bait. Nothing in this movie captivates you because even when it has something that could potentially work it just does it so poorly it loses anything good about it. The film is all over the place with strange humour, silly yet dull gunfights and lots of uninteresting plot points. When I watched “City Heat” I eventually found my eyes drifting away from the screen not because the movie was horrifically bad (it isn’t painful to sit through) but because I was bored. “City Heat” apparently had a very troublesome pre-production with several directors on and off the project so it’s understandable how this could have happened but surely that should have meant we got an amalgamation of all the best bits. “City Heat” is a movie where it is obvious some said ‘I want this to happen’ without any structure.