Heat (1986 film)

Heat is a 1986 American crime thriller directed by Dick Richards, starring Burt Reynolds as Nick "Mex" Escalante, a Las Vegas bodyguard and self-described "chaperone" who saves money to move to Venice, Italy, and takes revenge on a mob-connected gambler who brutally beats a friend. The screenplay is by William Goldman, adapted from his own 1985 novel of the same name.^{1 • 2}

Origin in Goldman's novel

The film is unusually tied to one writer: Goldman wrote the source novel, first published in 1985, and the screenplay, and the story is recognizably his, a character drama mixed with a thriller set in a Las Vegas he had come to know while researching a proposed musical remake of Grand Hotel that was never made.² The novel's protagonist, Nick Escalante, is a "chaperone" or hired muscle and a Vietnam veteran who does various jobs around town.²

Goldman otherwise said little about the film. In his memoir Which Lie Did I Tell? he explained that "the reason you will not learn more about this baby in these pages is simple: to my knowledge, lawsuits are still flying."² The novel came out of what Goldman described as a "leper period" in the early 1980s, when he was not in demand as a screenwriter; Heat was one of five books he wrote in those years, alongside Control (1982), The Silent Gondoliers (1983), The Colour of Light (1984), and Brothers (1986).²

Production and release

The production was troubled. A contemporary review account states that the problems encountered during production led to the involvement of a total of five directors, and suggests that the film's bumpy shifts in tone and pacing owe something to that history.⁹ IMDb credits Dick Richards as director, with his name given on screen as R.M. Richards, and lists Jerry Jameson as an uncredited director.¹ The producers of record were George Pappas, Keith Rotman, and Cassian Elwes, with Elliott Kastner producing uncredited; Michael Gibbs wrote the music and James A. Contner was the cinematographer.¹

The British Board of Film Classification recorded a cinema version of 100 minutes 35 seconds, classified on August 5, 1986, with Escalante Productions as distributor; a home-entertainment version of 96 minutes 36 seconds was classified on July 22, 1988, for Warner Home Video.⁴ Release dates varied by country: France first, on November 12, 1986, then Finland on February 6, 1987, the United States on March 13, 1987, Sweden on May 1, 1987, and Italy on May 29, 1987.³ The film took in approximately $2.79 million at the box office.⁶

Reception

The film was released to what one retrospective calls fairly uniform bad reviews and tepid box office results.² On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 38% Tomatometer from 8 critics and a 27% audience score from more than 100 ratings.⁷ Roger Ebert gave it 2 of 4 stars, writing that "the movie is filled with promising starts, but then everything dissolves into a violent action climax."⁷ Walter Goodman of The New York Times described the Las Vegas setting and a story that works up "tepidly" to a big battle in a factory.⁷ Retrospective assessments have been more mixed: one 2024 review called it "probably worth remaking as Wild Card" but found "treasures amongst the ruins for fans of William Goldman's gift for character."⁷

Later history

Goldman's story was remade in 2015 as Wild Card, with Jason Statham in the Escalante role; the FilmInk retrospective judges that the relationship between Escalante and Cyrus is stronger in the 1986 version, with what it calls a more noble climactic gesture from Cyrus.² Kino Lorber has issued a Special Edition of the film, presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio in color, and the film is available for theatrical and educational booking through that label.⁵ The title should not be confused with Michael Mann's 1995 crime film of the same name, a separate work about a Los Angeles detective and a bank robber.¹⁰

References

1. Heat (1986) Full Cast & Crew, IMDb
2. Cinematic Misfires: William Goldman's Heat (1986), FilmInk, Stephen Vagg
3. Heat (1986) Release Info, IMDb
4. Heat, British Board of Film Classification
5. Heat (Special Edition), Kino Lorber
6. Heat (1986), New On Netflix Canada
7. Heat, Rotten Tomatoes
8. Heat (1986) plot summary, NetflixMovies.com
9. Heat (1986) review, The Fresh Films
10. Heat (1995), Oscars.org

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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