L.A. Heat

Ill keep this short; writing about stuff like this really makes me realise to what extent the English language is limited.

From concept to post-production, this film is flawless. The direction and, specifically, the editing of the piece show years of creative experience in the field. Laurence Hilton-Jacobs returns to the screen with a proto-naturalistic approach to the portrayal of a broken man living in a world which does not appreciate him. The beauty of this is that it seems to reflect the life of Merhi so far. His unique style when directing his works has not always been accepted by an audience of which the majority are used to much more mainstream, commercial films.

The overall 'feel' of the film is of perfection and finesse. It maintains this finish while keeping its art-house status and evading the glossy overcoat which is becoming more and more popularly associated with the industry in America. Over the years I've familiarised myself with the abstract writing style of Kanganis, and it has become a little habit of mine to expect these little surprises that he has for us with each release. The reflection mentioned above seems to have come about naturally; the troubled mind of Merhi and artistic aptitude of Kanganis come together to bring the film together with a fine-tuned taste, but not pretentiousness, and to end it with such a gritty climax as it does.

Merhi is an overwrought genius whose presentation, when grouped with the textual gold of Kanganis' script and the on screen presence of Hilton-Jacobs of such charm and without antecedence is, frankly, magical.

L. A Heat. (1988) Joseph Merhi.

PM Entertainment's low-budget, bullet-shredded, late 80s shoot 'em up, L. A Heat is greatly elevated by the charismatic presence of big Jim Brown. LA Cops go hard after a violently gunhappy drug dealer which affords bargain bucket action impresario Merhi plentiful opportunities for softboiled B-Movie badinage and righteous amounts of slo-mo squibage! The skeezy downtown L. A setting is grungily atmospheric, and there's a boisterously old school Blaxsploitation vibe throughout that I really dug. Straight-shooting detective Lt. Chance (Lawrence Hilton Jacob ) is a tough, likeable good guy, and psycho copkiller Clarence ( Kevin Benton ) makes for a convincingly malign street thug.

This film either gets one star based on objective merit, or ten stars on how well it infringes on the rarefied thin air of Ed Woodish pretensions to greatness. I mean, I think it tried to be good. Everybody seemed pretty earnest. But what a POS.

I saw this movie a while back, but just saw it again on Action Channel. Missed the classic beginning chase. Comments follow on what I did catch this time around...

This movie is like a lesson on how not to make a movie. Major points of incompetence...

EDITING: Typical scene starts off with a coffee pot on a kitchen counter. Girlfriend walks into scene, gets a mug and glass from the cupboard, pours a coffee, then opens fridge to fill glass with orange juice, then walks out of frame. Empty kitchen. Continuous shot, static camera. What's the point? Why did we have to see this? For real, I was actually starting to fall asleep.

Over and over we see an empty room, characters walk in, barely ever a cutaway during conversation (and usually to a person not speaking???), then characters leave, and we see an empty room again. Why? About eight consolidated minutes of empty room shots. What the hell.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: There's this scene where Jacobs sneaks up on his girlfriend on the couch. Lazy ass director/DP never moves the camera. So the whole time the girl is talking to Jacobs, you only see the side/back of her head via this wacky low-angle shot that is dominated by a couch...the bottom part of the couch. In another scene where this mobster is talking to his girlfriend (just before he kills her!), there are weird stick-like shadows all over his face. Didn't anyone notice this during filming?

AUDIO: Frankly, I never clearly heard the director comments others have noted because he was drowned out by other ambient noise. Noises like feet shuffling, traffic, airplanes flying overhead. Makes you really appreciate the sound design on auto dealership commercials, etc., where you hear the talent and only the talent.

ACTION SEQUENCES: Hard to believe this film is a contemporary of Hard Boiled. In one ambush scene, three killers with M-16's and Uzis fire a total of five shots, sequentially, of course. One of the bloodpacks doesn't blow, so you just see this wad of white fabric explode out of one victim's shirt. Just before they're shot, all the actors look like you do when you're going to pop a balloon, stiff and all, cus you know the bang is coming. One of the urban gangster killers then actually slings his M-16 before hopping off the backyard deck. Surreal.

WRITING: There are too many inexplicable nonsense scenes, like when the urban gangster punks bust into the cop's house and play darts with the lights off. Huh? Was ist das? It's like, wow, maybe i did fall asleep because this stuff is so complex. I don't understand!

Actual dialogue sample from another scene: "I'm gonna cut you, man!"

Eh, all the rest is on a similar level. The actors seemed into it, as if they cared, but the performances were bad. I guess you gotta lay that on the director. So there: horrible, lazy DIRECTION. As actors, only Jacobs seemed to mail it in, but I think he was trying to play his character just a bit too cool, so it just seemed like he was sleepwalking. His name is in the end credits like six times, so he must've made an effort.

After watching this, you will want to buy a handycam just to prove anybody off the street could do better. And, yes, you would.

In 1989 to 1990, Lawrence Hiton-Jacobs starred in three movies as detective Jon Chance: CHANCE, L.A. VICE, and L.A. HEAT. All three of these movies were also early efforts by the studio PM Entertainment. If you've seen any of the other Jon Chance movies - or any PM Entertainment movies made during this same period - I think you'll have a good idea what to expect with this movie. The production values are unbelievably low - it looks like they shot on videotape and transferred it to film. A lot of dialogue was obviously looped in post-production. The script and direction are awful; scenes end abruptly before the viewers get all the information they need, the dream sequences are goofy in nature, and for the longest time the story comes to a complete halt and the characters do nothing important at all. There is an occasional chuckle from the utter lameness, but for the most part the movie is painful to watch. If you do decide to watch the movie, beware of the DVD - the DVD manufacturer used a TV print of the movie, which not only results with all the foul language being bleeped out, but with some video glitches. Obviously, quality control was not a high priority for the DVD manufacturer, though seeing the movie one can understand why.

Whenever Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs plays the character "Jon Chance" It's a helluva good show. I've seen several of these movies on late night TV and they're really good. I'm gonna try to get his works on dvd or video tape soon.