Director: John G. Thomas
Cast: Michael Parks, Denise Crosby, Hugh Farrington, Ron Briskman

First of all, I have a request for all the readers of this review: Look at the stars. No, I am not talking about the ones that can been seen in the sky at night - I am talking about the stars in the motion picture industry, specifically when it comes to thespian stars. Take a look at them a little, and see if you find something a bit odd about this body of stars. If you can't see what's strange about them, I will tell you now: When it comes to prominent movie stars, the bulk of them are male instead of female. While males make up about 50.4% of the human race, you would think that the ratio of famous male movie stars to famous female movie stars would be about equal. But there are actually some big reasons as to why you see more big male movie stars in movies and the covering media than female movie stars. Famed producer Samuel Z. Arkoff once pointed out a big truth in the movie business, pointing out that while in the public, males and females will go out to see male-oriented movies, young and older males generally don't go to see female-oriented movies. I would also add that when a female-oriented movie does come, with some occasional exceptions ranging from Ocean's 8 to Disney animated princess movies, women generally don't go to female-oriented movies in droves like men often do with male-oriented movies. This can be seen in movies like The Joy Luck Club and The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants, which were mildly successful...  at best. You can also add the factor that female-oriented movies can more easily spark backlashes in the public. Take the case of the remake of Ghostbusters that had women in all the lead roles, which generated great hate all over the Internet even before it was released... and even more after it was released. (Personally, I didn't think the movie was quite as bad as it was made out to be; I thought the lead actresses were amiable and charming. However, due to a bad script and uninspired direction, the actresses were simply unable to generate any laughs despite their talents.)

This often uncomfortable-to-witness hatred towards movies with a strong female presence can be especially bad when the female actresses in these movies are playing authority figures. Many men do not like the idea of women doing "a man's job", to put it bluntly. Though I personally do enjoy seeing movies where women "take charge" with a heavy hand, there is a reason why not many movies like those are made. Arkoff, for example, produced several movies like these in the 1970s with the delectable Pam Grier, but while the Grier movies were profitable, the movies' final grosses were far from the blockbuster grosses made by male-oriented movies coming from the major studios. It's even harder to find female-led "take charge" movies when the female protagonist or protagonists are authority figures, such as police officers. The sad fact is that many men in real life like to think that "they" are in charge, and when they see a woman either in real life or in a movie making orders and in control of a situation, the men don't like it. That is, I think the real reason why it's so hard to find movies where police officers or other law-enforcing individuals are played by women. It seems that for every Silence Of The Lambs, you'll finds dozens, if not hundreds of movies where the law enforcers are played by men. And in those rare movies where the law enforcers are played by women, you'll more often than not find that they are being restrained from going all-out and being "tough" like their male counterparts. Off the top of my head, the only exceptions I can think of to this are some Cythnia Rothrock cop movies and some Hong Kong movies where the female cop protagonists kicked butt and took names. As I indicated earlier, most men in the general public don't seem to care about seeing cinematic female cops who act tough and take charge.

One technique that some filmmakers have done to try and sell the idea of a female cop diving deep into the gunfire like your typical male cinematic cop is to pair the female cop with a male cop. In some sense, this is a genius move towards those sexist male viewers who wouldn't accept a female cop doing everything completely on her own; male viewers would have someone to identify with, and feel less threatened. It can also make potential male viewers believe that there might be some nice sexual tension or full-blown sex between the male and female cop. Probably the most famous movie to pair a female cop with a male cop was the Dirty Harry movie The Enforcer, which was a good movie, though it seemed a bit odd to me that the female cop in the movie seemed goofy and out of her element in the first half, then in the second half suddenly became clever and brave. In fact, when I learned about Arizona Heat - a movie about a male and a female cop paired together - I wondered it would follow The Enforcer's portrayal of the female cop, as well as the tensions (work and otherwise) the Clint Eastwood movie had. As you probably guessed, the events of the movie take place in the American state of Arizona. Not long after the movie begins, a uniformed cop is killed by what seems to be lightning while investigating an incapacitated driver stopped at an intersection. A police detective named Larry (Michael Parks, Kill Bill) is put on the case, but his chief thinks the impulsive and trigger-happy Larry may need some help with the investigation, so he pairs up Larry with another police officer. As you probably guessed, this second police officer is a woman, specifically a woman named Jill (Denise Crosby, Eliminators and Star Trek: The Next Generation). Since Larry is your stereotypical crude and sexist tough male cop, this doesn't sit well with him, especially since he eventually finds out that Jill is a lesbian, which provokes his homophobic, as well as sexist, sides. Neverless, orders are orders, and Larry and Jill have to find a way to track down the cop killer while each loathing the partner they have been paired up with. And while they are finding it difficult to work together, the number of killed cops in the city starts rising steadily.

When analyzing a "buddy movie", cop-oriented or not, one of the usual ways to analyze the success or failure of the movie is to examine the two central characters. Not just with how they fare when paired up together, but also by looking at each character by his or herself. With Arizona Heat, I'll start my critique by doing the latter kind of analysis, beginning with Larry. Larry is a kind of interesting character, though admittedly a lot of the "interest" that I found with the character wasn't necessarily for the movie's benefit. It's established that he's good at solving cases, and he has some smart ideas over the course of the movie, such as how he foils some bank robbers from retreating back into the bank when they spot the police waiting for them outside. Positive details like that do explain why his long-suffering captain (Hugh Farrington, T. J. Hooker) and fellow officers put up with him for the most part, which is important, because the guy is constantly a big boor - to put it mildly. Believe it or not, Larry actually becomes more crude, more sexist, and more abhorrent as the movie goes on! While this might make him sound intolerable, actor Michael Parks almost makes this guy tolerable. He doesn't go all out for the most part. In fact, at times he just seems to be going through the motions instead of putting more conviction in. In the end, Parks doesn't quite pull things off due to his phoning it in, but to his credit, Larry isn't as repulsive as he could have been. On the other hand, Denise Crosby gives a dedicated and professional performance as policewoman Jill. Jill isn't for the most part as shocked as you might think by Larry's scummy behavior; you can tell right from the start she is used to being exposed to sexist behavior from other cops in the past. She has a spine and isn't afraid to lash out at Larry, but she shows moments of compassion, such as when she interviews a female witness. Jill is sympathetic, and a cop to root for, even after one moment when she finds a bullet at a crime scene and handles it with her bare hands. (Well, nobody else on the force finds that wrong for that matter.)

So how is it when these two mismatched cops are forced to team up and solve the case? Well, there is definitely quite a bit of chemistry generated. Both cops (well, mostly Larry) are quick to jab at each other, and I will admit that some of their banter comes across as lightly amusing to hear. Plus, unlike most buddy cop movies, this pairing up does feel a bit more authentic than usual. However, there is one critical error with the design of this particular cop pairing, in that it's not given a proper conclusion. Just before the climax of the movie, both Larry and Jill have a very serious clash with each other, due to circumstances I do not wish to spoil for readers. The clash really changes how they feel towards each other, but shortly afterwards, the climax unfolds, and almost right after it finishes unfolding, the movie pretty much ends immediately. So questions like if both of them have patched things up, or if they've changed attitudes towards each other are not answered, and all this gives Arizona Heat a frustratingly unfinished feeling. However, that's not the only issue I had with the movie's script. One of the biggest problems I had with the movie was the mystery surrounding the cop killer - or, should I say, no real mystery with the identity of the killer. A character makes a supposedly subtle remark before the halfway point that immediately to me identified his/herself as the killer, and I had to subsequently wait a very long time before the "surprise" revelation. It might not have been so bad to wait had the investigation done by Larry and Jill been interesting and snappy in tone, but it isn't. The investigation goes by at the speed of molasses, taking much longer than any real investigation force would need to put the pieces together. In fact, the investigation is so boring and stretched out, the movie has to throw in unnecessary interludes such as that aforementioned and totally redundant bank robbery sequence to try and make the narrative interesting.

I guess all that "filler" material might have had the potential to make Arizona Heat an overall mediocre B movie buddy cop exercise had this extraneous footage been punchy, but it mostly isn't. The bank robbery sequence (segueing into a long car chase sequence) just feels flat, save for a couple of brief but impressive shots of cars flying through the air. Also, the individual moments when cops (or regular civilians) get killed have absolutely no shock or impact - they come across as completely flat, with the same effect of someone getting hit by a crumpled-up piece of paper. For that matter, much of the rest of Arizona Heat comes across as if director John G. Thomas (Banzai Run) had no personal interest in making a movie that would engage any kind of audience. Admittedly he does often give the movie a background air that feels very sun-bleached, dusty, and broken, which is different and more realistic than the polished air of most modern cop movies. But even then, the low energy of the movie is always evident. Thomas doesn't seem to care about punching things up, so much so that you'll be wondering why you should care about what you are seeing. Many scenes have the same vibe, visually and with audio as well, as those homemade productions you filmed with your friends with a VHS camcorder when you were a teenage, and this tacky presentation just caps the amateur air Arizona Heat has more often than not. It didn't help that the print of the movie I watched on the streaming service I found it on was obviously a scan of an ex-rental VHS tape copy of the movie. The fact that nobody apparently thought that keeping the original negative of Arizona Heat around would be worthwhile years later should by itself tell you what the general quality of the movie is like.

(Posted September 5, 2025)