Killer Heat follows twin brothers who find themselves in a dangerous love triangle on an isolated Greek island. The investigation is given to “The Jealousy Man,” a wounded detective. (IMDB summary)

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Killer Heat seems to be aiming at reviving film noir, but comes across as more of a poorly executed parody.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars unconvincingly as Nick Bali, a supposed hardened, wounded private eye. There is nothing in his performance, and very little in the script, to sell that description. His voice-over narration sounds like a drama club table read for their Autumn production. He is generally a reliable performer, so this seems an issue of casting him in the wrong part – and having weak character development.

Shailene Woodley is fine as Penelope Vardakis, the grieving sister-in-law. Again, though, there isn’t much to the character. Whether that is script, direction, or acting? All three? She is believable as the wealthy wife, and in flashbacks to her college days, but Penelope just isn’t interesting and we don’t care why she called in a detective. In the end, we are left unmoved by her tearful revelation

Richard Madden is better as the twins Elias & Leonidas, but he still has little to work with. He is almost comically broody, then randomly “menacing”.

The biggest failing, though, is the lack of mystery in the murder mystery. We know the who & how as soon as we meet the main characters, we know the why about 10 minutes later. The only real remaining questions are;

• why can our detective not solve the mystery since he has seen everything we have?
• why does he involve the local police – and why does that policeman go along?
• why do they keep telling us “the family controls the island” without ever giving us evidence of such or a reason why they or any residents would care?
• why do we have a random, sloppy break in/search for evidence with multiple deaths – and zero repercussions?
• how do they manage to have zero chemistry between any of the characters?
• Why did I waste 97 minutes on this junk?

Then we have a twist ending that we all saw coming about 95 minutes ago, except for one character’s action that is completely against the very little character they gave her earlier in the script. (I don’t want to put a spoiler in here since it was literally the only thing you wouldn’t see coming, but it makes no sense in the larger storyline)

One star for unintentional comedic parts. I would normally give it a higher rating for a beautiful setting, but they really don’t give you much of that….

Killer Heat does involve a killer, but not even a little heat.

Rotten Tomatoes: Critics 12%; Audience 33%
Vox AZ

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