“The Heat” (2013) was historic in that it was the first-ever buddy-cop movie starring two women. To the list of male buddy-cop flicks like Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker—we added Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.
You might argue that there was “Charlie’s Angels,” but there were three of them. There was “Cagney & Lacy,” but that was TV. There was “Feds,” but it didn’t have bona fide movie stars. “The Heat” had the stars and brought the funny, big time; it was a shoo-in for the breakout summer comedy hit of 2013. Everyone was thinking franchise, but oddly it never materialized. With Bullock’s “The Lost City” currently a big hit in theaters, it could still easily happen. Except for cancel culture. More on that in a bit.
Odd Couple
Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is a by-the-book, Yale-educated FBI agent up for promotion. Her boss sends her to Boston to prove herself on a tough drug case. Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) is a street-smart veteran Boston police officer, highly intolerant of FBI know-it-alls in her ’hood. It’s snooty versus vulgar in a classic “Odd Couple” showdown that’s so classic it’s cliché, but it works well.
While having completely different personalities, they are, after all, both law enforcement professionals and eventually, of course, bond over the recognition and respect of their common ground and respective talents and raison d’être—going after bad guys.
When they catch one, there’s an interrogation scene in which McCarthy-as-Mullins plays Russian roulette with the interrogatee in captivating new ways. Ashburn and Mullins then bond over Mullins’s ridiculous super-arsenal (stored in her actual refrigerator), and there’s more thoroughly-soused bonding in the bar. Then, naturally, there’s the prep-for-the-mission, strap-on-gear, and lock-and-load sequence; time to take down the rest of the bad guys.
Any Good?
“The Heat” has good tension and pacing throughout, immediately capturing attention with the Isley Brothers’s “Fight the Power” pumping up the soundtrack. The move to Boston is established with power chords compliments of Jack White, which underscores the different racial milieus of New York and Boston.
“The Heat,” being a pre-cancel culture, bawdy R-rated comedy (is there any other kind lately?) with hilarious racial jokes running rampant, it would be amazing if this potential franchise could still take off in today’s hyper-sensitive climate. One imagines that even the use in “The Heat” of funky background music, which, in a comedy, always immediately recalls the 1970s TV hit “Sanford and Son,” might get called on the carpet in 2022. The sight gag of officer Shannon Mullins bombing a fleeing black perp with a super-accurately lobbed watermelon is heart-attack funny. Not to mention she gets immediately accused by said perp, saying (of the watermelon bomb), “That’s so racist!!” To which she earnestly argues back, words to the effect of “How is that racist??? All the guys I date are black!”
According to the press notes, director Feig said of the script, “one of the funniest I’ve ever read,” and writer Katie Dippold said, “Sandy and Melissa took what was on the page and made it funnier than I thought it could ever be.”
The original breakout role for Melissa McCarthy was in “Bridesmaids,” but the role of Officer Mullins catapulted her to true movie star. McCarthy handily steals every scene from Bullock, and that’s saying something, since Bullock is one of movie-dom’s reigning queens of comedy.
The problem is, while Bullock’s not exactly miscast (in fact, one could argue she’s perfectly cast in her power-alley archetype of zealous overachiever), she does what’s known in acting parlance as “playing an idea” of the role. While slick, this approach always registers as slightly contrived, whereas McCarthy is “playing actions” (which is why it’s called the art of “acting” and not feeling, or emoting) and is always therefore more grounded and charismatic—thus naturally pulling focus. Her one-liners are all effortless bull’s-eyes.
In another of the movie’s funniest scenes, the two interrupt Officer Mullins’s family at dinnertime. The actors playing her extended Bostonian family are a hidden stacked deck of talent, all professional comedians, all from Boston, and so the ensuing hysterical dinner-table insult-fest is just fantastic. It’s like a high-comedy version of the dysfunctional Bostonian family in the movie “The Fighter,” replete with a “Who’s on First?” type of wordplay-confusion over the Bostonian pronunciation of the word “naaahhhk” (narc).
At the finale, the duo announce themselves with authority: “Who are we? We’re The Heat!” I, for one, hope “The Heat” indeed becomes a franchise and insults as as wide a swath of America as possible, so we can all relax and stop taking ourselves so seriously. That’s what comedies are for.
‘The Heat’
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 57 minutes
Release Date: June 28, 2013
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
