The moviegoing year came to an unremarkable close with DELTA HEAT, a curdled mix of gunplay and gumbo--the umpteenth variation on the buddy-cop formula.
The LAPD traces a new designer drug to New Orleans, where one officer turns up murdered and mutilated Cajun-voodoo-style. The victim's partner, silly California pretty-boy Detective Mike Bishop (Anthony Edwards), arrives in Bayou Country with an earring, a disco-dance wardrobe and a vow of
vengeance. The killer's style was the trademark of Antoine Forbes, a legendary crimelord who supposedly perished in a fiery shootout and explosion years ago. One of the last Louisiana lawmen to hunt Forbes was clean-cut New Orleans officer Crawford (Rod Masterson). Another was Jackson Rivers
(Lance Henricksen), now an embittered, hook-handed, swamp-dwelling hermit.
The odd couple of gaunt, grumbly Rivers and natty, numbskull Bishop swap the expected wisecracks as they prowl the backstreets, docks and verandas of the Big Easy, following up unresolved strands of the Forbes case. Soon the informers they locate are turning up murdered, each with one of Rivers's
favorite cigarettes by the body. Bishop decides Rivers is some sort of drug-smuggling psycho throwback to Antoine Forbes (who indeed survived, as a scarred, vegetative husk in a nursing home), but when he aids Rivers's swamp hovel the real evildoers reveal themselves--Crawford and his corrupt
precinct cohorts.
The climax shows what happens when a screenwriter paints himself into a corner. The villains have Bishop and Rivers captive and helpless; there's no possible way the heroes can hope to escape. So the bad guys abruptly and pointlessly turn against each other, giving the partners the opportunity to
triumph after all.
Released direct-to-video at the end of December, DELTA HEAT is at its best when the sublimely saturnine Lance Henricksen (ALIENS, NEAR DARK) is in full swing as the grizzled Cajun cop, a showy role he relishes with scenery-chewing delight. Even Edwards looks good playing off the character
contrast. Otherwise Det. Bishop seems like he should be carrying a surfboard, not a badge. The rest of the cast have fun with Big Easy accents and attitudes, and the Southern-fried speech patterns flavor the dialogue (sexy heroine Betsy Russell, on Bishop's cologne: "What is that pugnacious
aroma?"), but the overall self-consciousness of the effort doesn't so much preserve the on-location New Orleans atmosphere as stuff it and mount it for display.
An inordinate amount of humor derives from the homespun torture methods Rivers uses to make suspects confess; violence on balance isn't as severe as it could have been, but there's enough of it to please fans and put off those who are not naturally enamored of the cross-cultural clashes of buddy
cops. The inevitable barroom brawl is accompanied by the music and onscreen appearance of Rockin' Dopsie and the Zydeco Twisters, who contribute the soundtrack tunes "Josephine Pas Se Ma Femme" and "LaFayette Two Step." (Violence, profanity, sexual situations, nudity.) leave a comment
