cult film freak: BURT REYNOLDS IN THE LAS VEGAS NEON NEO-NOIR OF 'HEAT'

Title: HEAT Year: 1986 Rating: ***1/2

After Burt Reynolds career derailed following too many bland romantic comedies and vapid car chase movies, especially STROKER ACE, he made a string of relatively unknown neo noir action flicks liken to his 1981 gritty cop exploitation SHARKY'S MACHINE...

And while STICK took source novelist Elmore Leonard's pulpy approach in balmy Florida and MALONE headed to the woodsy wilderness, HEAT sizzles in Sin City where Reynold's character Nick is a kind of hired makeshift bodyguard with an edgy past while suffering the worst addiction to have in Las Vegas... gambling...

Burt Reynolds in HEAT

Making up one of the most suspenseful scenes at a blackjack table in an otherwise sporadically violent fight flick pitting Reynolds against a bratty mobster's son... who'd already beaten up heart-of-gold hooker Karen Young...

But the scene-stealer here is Peter MacNicol as an early computer mogul-geek who hires Burt to teach him how to fight, and to basically be a man, as their odd couple friendship could have taken up more screen-time in what's really a slow-burn character-driven noir that, despite bordering on a straight-to-video release, seemed right up Reynold's alley even though, career-wise, it was too little too late.