Even before the resurrection of his career with the television show 24, I was always a big fan of Kiefer Sutherland’s. He seemed to have a knack for choosing quirky, eccentric characters in movies which gave him a chance to broaden his range and distinguish himself, although the films were rarely headliners after the disasters in his personal life in the early 1990’s. With Dead Heat, however, Sutherland chose a character that hardly has anything unique to him. The only thing I can think of is he needed the money.

Pally LaMarr (Sutherland) is a cop who’s forced to retire due to a heart condition. Having walked out on his wife, Charlotte (Radha Mitchell), he feels he has no reason to live. That changes when his step-brother, Ray (Anthony LaPaglia) shows Pally a horse destined for the glue factory. Ray has learned the horse has a medical condition, and once that’s corrected, the horse is fast.

The only problem is the two brothers give a piece of the horse to a jockey, Tony (Lothaire Bluteau) in exchange for him riding the horse. The jockey is in deep to a loan shark (Daniel Benzali) for gambling debts, and the mobster takes the whole horse as partial payment.

What follows is the story of the horse and two brothers versus the mob. Along the way they pick-up Tony’s wise-beyond-her-years daughter. This draws Charlotte back into the story as one thing missing from her marriage to Pally was children. The two don’t seem to have stopped loving each other, as Charlotte worries about Pally and he seems to be pining for her.

The problem here is the plot itself is nothing new. I’ve seen countless ex-cop stories which hinge on the fact that once displaced from their job, these former officers don’t seem to know how to live. Pally is not different from any I’ve seen before in the least; neither Sutherland nor the script bring anything unique to the role. There’s a couple of terrific scenes near the beginning, especially when Pally is on the verge of suicide using the service revolver presented to him at his retirement. However, Mel Gibson’s scenes as the psychotic grieving detective in Lethal Weapon really were so much better.

The other problem is that the film vacillates so between being a thriller and comedy that it loses it’s effectiveness as either. The humorous relationship between the brothers is lost in the drama over battling a murderous mob boss. It’s not funny when Pally and Charlotte dispose of a dead body while the kid is in the back seat, no matter how little sympathy I felt for the dead guy.

Nothing that surprising happens in the film and the “happily ever after” ending also is too pat to really be convincing. The only thing that in any way redeems the film is the camaraderie between brothers. LaPaglia and Sutherland seemed to be making the most of the situation when the two of them are together on the screen, and try to have fun with it, but the pacing is just so off as the story vacillates between dark comedic moments and drama that the potential here is lost.

There’s not much in the way of Special features on the disc. Commentary with Writer/Director Mark Malone is available, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit through the film a second time. The Trailer is also on the disc.

Unless you’re a super-big Kiefer Sutherland fan who needs to see everything he’s done, it’s not worth renting this flick. If it happens to come up when you’re flipping around the cable movie stations, it might be worth watching over the 25th showing of something else, but I have no desire to see this again.


Other Kiefer Sutherland movie reviews:

Chicago Joe and the Showgirl ~ The Cowboy Way ~ Desert Saints ~ A Few Good Men ~ Ground Control ~ Lost Boys ~ Picking Up the Pieces ~ The Right Temptation ~ Ring of Fire ~ The Three Musketeers



© 2004 Patti Aliventi

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