Posted: Sat., Dec. 31, 1983, 11:00pm PT

City Heat

By Variety Staff

Malpaso/Deliverance/Warner. Director Richard Benjamin; Producer Fritz Manes; Screenplay Sam O. Brown [= Blake Edwards], Joseph C. Stinson; Camera Nick McLean; Editor Jacqueline Cambas; Music Lennie Niehaus;; Art Director Edward Carfagno

Clint Eastwood Burt Reynolds Jane Alexander Madeline Kahn Rip Torn Richard Roundtree

City Heat is an amiable but decidedly lukewarm confection geared entirely around the two star turns.

Set in an unnamed city around the end of Prohibition, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds were old pals in their early days as cops, but the former has taken a dim view of the latter's jump over to the private detective business, resulting in a certain tension between them.

Reynolds' partner, Richard Roundtree, gets bumped off in the early going, and Reynolds spends the remainder of the picture attempting to play two mobster kingpins off one another.

Some of the repartee is relatively amusing, and the two stars with tongues firmly in cheek, easily set the prevailing tone of lowkeyed facetiousness.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1984. Running time: 97 MIN.