Boiling Point

Los Angeles-based treasury agent Jimmy Mercer (Wesley Snipes) and his partner Brady (Dan Hedaya) are on a routine stakeout when a third agent is killed. The gunman escapes and Mercer is transferred to Newark, ostensibly for failing to follow proper procedure; in fact, as he knows, he's being punished for the mess. In the week before his transfer becomes effective, Mercer dedicates himself to tracking down the killer. Red Diamond (Dennis Hopper) is a genial con man, just out of jail after a five-year stretch. His long-suffering wife Mona (Valerie Perrine) wants to be left alone, and he owes $50,000 to a sleek money man (Tony Lo Bianco) who insists on payment within a week. Red's new partner, Ronnie (Viggo Mortensen), is dim witted and trigger happy; he's also the man Mercer is hunting. Red needs a big score, and gets involved in the world of counterfeiting. Mercer's superiors warn him to do as he's told, Mona tells Red to let her be or at least to stick to the straight and narrow, and Vikki Dunbar (Lolita Davidovich), the sweet-natured prostitute with whom Mercer is having an affair, nudges him to start a new life with her. As the end of the week deadline approaches, both Red and Mercer become increasingly desperate, and the web tightens. Finally, Red, Ronnie, Mona (from whom Red has inveighed one last chance), and Mercer all converge at Red's favorite dance hall; when the gunfire stops, Red and Ronnie are dead, Mercer has accomplished his mission, and Mona is waiting outside on the pavement, unaware of what's happened.

BOILING POINT is a thriller in which the important action is all internal, in which people lie and reassure one another with the phrase, "That's no lie." They all want to make fresh starts, but can't wrench free of the past. Mercer is guilt-ridden and depressed; dedication to his job has cost him his marriage and child, and while his ex-wife is getting on with her life, his remains in limbo. It's not easy to steal a scene from Dennis Hopper, who comes to the role of Red--who feels more trapped out of prison than he did inside--armed with a startling dye job, a pair of alarming wing-tips, and the mannerisms to match. But Viggo Mortensen manages it, evoking a subdued, doltish menace that gives the film its only real twist. Ronnie is a psychopath, but it's loveable Red who manipulates and betrays Ronnie, eventually sacrificing him to the T-men in hopes of buying himself time to escape.

Director James B. Harris has been behind several peculiar low budget features, including SOME CALL IT LOVING, with Zalman King, and two James Woods films: FAST-WALKING and COP. All are far more interesting than BOILING POINT, which for all its surface polish is so conventional that it vanishes from memory as soon as it's over. To his credit, Harris avoids the cliche of explaining Red and Ronnie in terms of unhappy childhoods and warped dreams. They're both genuinely evil, sociopaths who see other people as tools or impediments, and BOILING POINT is built on a foundation of relentless moral ambiguity. Red and Mercer are the flip sides of one another, and they don't merely cross paths figuratively: throughout the film, they regularly nearly encounter one another, standing side by side in front of a men's room mirror and even dating the same whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, without ever realizing how tightly their destinies are intertwined. Though hardly an original notion, this affinity between cop and criminal might be interesting if only BOILING POINT were not so dull.

Counterfeiting is not bank robbery, and treasury agents are not FBI men; the plot is all deals and double crosses conducted beneath a veneer of cold correctness, all less crudely exciting than car chases and running gun battles. William Friedkin's TO LIVE & DIE IN LA, also based on a Gerald Petievich novel about counterfeiting, managed to crank up the action to a level acceptable to the average thriller buff, but it's not easy when the crime involves endless paper transactions. BOILING POINT's lone explosion feels out of place, a sop to viewers lured in under false pretenses. BOILING POINT did badly in theaters, perhaps in part because Warners changed the title from the undynamic but accurate "Money Men" (the title song, "Money Men," remains over the tail credits) to BOILING POINT, which suggests an altogether more urgent sort of film. (Violence, profanity, sexual situations, adult situations.)