Red Heat (1988)

Entertaining enough buddy-cop movie has some fun action scenes (the bus chase sequence was great). Only thing holding it back was the pairing of Schwarzenegger and Belushi never quite worked for me. Still a good flick from Walter Hill, though not sure it ranks all that high compared with others from the era. **3.5/5**

I am not sure how much actual acting Arnold Schwarzenegger had to do in this rather derivative crime caper. A bit like John Wayne in "Brannigan" (1975), he is despatched to partner up with a cop abroad to order to repatriate a dangerous criminal. In this case, though, he is a Russian and it is wise-cracking American "Ridzik" (Jim Belushi) that he must bridge the culture-gap and work with to track down a murderous drug dealer who did for his partner and fled. To be fair to Arnie, he has his tongue a bit in his cheek here, but Belushi just mis-fires once too often in this rather sloppy adventure. The escapades are all rather predictable and the underlying joke/scenario wears thin all too quickly. I suppose it nods a little to the thawing in the post-Reagan relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union, but the delivery borders on the slapstick at times and I was never really a fan of Belushi's brand of rather puerile comedy - indulged in spades here by a trio of writers including the usually far more reliable Troy Kennedy Martin. It passes the time effortlessly enough, and reminds us who lived through that period of just how dodgy some of our fashions were, but thereafter it's all pretty mediocre fayre.