Downtown Heat — Downtown Heat (Blu Ray)
Downtown Heat is a rather dialogue-heavy, at points unintentionally amusing action thriller from the mid-1990s. The most notable thing about it is that it was directed by prolific, mostly genre-bound, and often sleazy Euro director Jess Franco. And boy it’s very un-Franco-like, with aside a few touches & cast members you wouldn’t know it had anything to with Uncle Jess. Here from Full Moon Features is a region-free release of the film.
Downtown Heat aka Ciudad Baja is a Spanish production from the year 1990, but it didn’t get released until 1994, and I’d most certainly say it’s more 80s, than 90s in its tone/ feel. It was directed/ co-written by Franco- by this point in his career, his output had very much slowed from that of the late 70s and early ’80s- with only one other film released in 1990 (the year it should have appeared) being Countdown to Esmeralda Bay. The version we have here features a fairly decent English dub- the film (I think) is meant to be set in an unnamed South American city
After the effective car lights blurring, nighttime city light maps, and slight wonky jazz funk title credits. We see two men carrying a passed-out woman from a car into a van at dusk- we pan back to see the vans on the edge of the cliffside- one of the men sloshes on petrol to the van, as the other pushes the van towards the edge of the cliff. Just as the van is getting closer & closer to the edge, up pull’s tight black curled haired cop Alberto (Óscar Ladoire) a gunfight ensues, with his partner is hit/killed, as the van finally topples off the cliff to explode. The bad guy's car speeds off, with Alberto following him down winding nighttime roads- he calls it in as well as the number plate, but is told to pull back/ let the car go- as we move on we find Alberto’s superior the grey-haired ragged faced Badal(Philippe Lemaire), is under the pay of a crocked diplomat who is involved in the drug trade.
Next we meet Steve(Mike Connors) an American sax player, whose junky wife disappeared some weeks back. Due to this, he comes in contact with Alberto- who shows him a few of the recent dead female bodies that have turned up at the police morgue- none of them are his girlfriend. As things unfold these two team up with short-haired female officer Maria(Josephine Chaplin), and a few others to try & track down Steve’s girlfriend, and overthrow the crocked diplomat/ connected drug trade.
Franco regular/ muse Lina Romay turns up in a small role as Melissa- who is the lesbian punk girlfriend of Steve’s wife. The nearing one hour and forty-minute film slips itself between a fairly few talky scenes, a few gun flights- including a chopper Vs car one, and some (fairly pedestrian)car chases.
The acting here is highly mixed- Ladoire portrays the moral-yet-no-nonsense lead cop well & Mike Connors is a little flat as the looking for his wife Jazzman. We get a fair few later middle-aged men in the film- these largely shift between being rather soapy & overacted.
The unintentionally amusing elements in the film come from the seriously hamming it up near death/ dying scenes. And dodgy action set-ups- like a tightly shot scene that’s meant to be a man shooting from a chopper, but clearly is a van door with the camera being shaken. Though so-bad-there-great action fans won’t get enough here to fully satisfy- as these elements are fairly fleeting, and mostly the tone is relatively serious.
Downtown Heat is ok for what it is- a too-talky/run-of-the-mill action thriller. As a long-term fan of Franco’s work, it was certainly neat to see the film- but it is most certainly the most untypical film I’ve seen….and I must have seen around a hundred of his films.
The region-free Blu-Ray presents us with a nicely clean and crisp scan- with great audio too, and as I mentioned earlier it features a fairly good English dub. The disc's only extra is a film trailer/ trailer reel.
In finishing I’d say you’ll most certainly have to be a fan of more dialogue-heavy action thrillers to fully enjoy Downtown Heat- and it’s certainly one of the more run-of-the-mill examples of that genre. I guess there will be appeal/ curiosity from the director's normal fanbase, and I’d say if you fit into that camp do approach with caution/ know what to expect when slipping the disc into watch.