Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Killer Heat’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Disappointing Warm-Weather Noir Led by Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Killer Heat ( now streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) is what I like to call photo-negative noir – you get all the hardboiled voiceovers and hard-luck protagonists and femmes fatale, but in a setting that’s bright and warm and sunny instead of dim and rainy and shadowy. Twice-Oscar-nominated filmmaker Philippe Lacote (2014’s Run and 2020’s Night of the Kings were up for best foreign language film) writes and directs this mystery set in Greece, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a private detective hired by Shailene Woodley to investigate an accidental death that she believes to be not-so-accidental. Both actors have seen their profiles fade a little since they starred in 2016’s Snowden together (lots of supporting roles and under-the-radar releases), and, frankly, Killer Heat isn’t about to change that.

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The Gist: The guy was an expert rock climber, but even experts can slip and fall and die, right? Right. But the probability of it seems pretty low. So Leo Vardakis’ (Richard Madden) untimely demise has a stink of suspicion to it, and the perfect guy to take a big whiff of the sitch is Nick Bali (Gordon-Levitt), an American expat who knows damn well that a white fedora is just the thing a private dick should wear to a postcard Greek island. We watch as Leo navigates the nooks and crannies of a sunsoaked rock face he’s traversed many times before, and Nick narrates, making allusions to the fable of Icarus. This is absolutely the type of locale that might make you feel like you’re a touch too close to the sun.

Background: Leo is a Vardakis, the rich-as-eff family that runs a lucrative shipping business and exists on a yacht or sprawling villa, ever surrounded by a security team. The Vardakises run this town and do some evil business and have the cops on their payroll. Leo’s identical twin brother Elias (also Madden) is married to Penelope (Woodley), and the implication is, it’s not a particularly happy marriage. She’s the one who smelt the stink and called in Nick and kept it a secret from her hubs and in-laws, who wouldn’t take kindly to such meddling. Did I mention she dated Leo for a bit and then hopped to Elias? Well, she did, and it’s not only weird, it’s emblematic of this family’s mighty dysfunction.

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So Nick pokes around when he’s not slugging down booze, trying to achieve the perfect blackout that doesn’t stir up any painful memories of his broken marriage and the daughter he hasn’t seen in who knows how long – stuff we get glimpses of in melodramatic flashbacks. Penelope puts him up in a room in the local monastery, because, well, symbolism I guess, or irony . He masquerades as an insurance rep and a National Intelligence Service agent, corners Elias, befriends the only local cop (Babou Ceesay) who isn’t on the Vardakis’ payroll and occasionally meets with Penelope to whisper about this or that in regards to what he’s turned up and what she knows. Will anyone end up beaten or dead before he gets to the bottom of this? Sure seems likely.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Can’t help but think of Gordon-Levitt’s breakthrough as a movie star, Rian Johnson’s clever high-school noir Brick . Otherwise, Body Heat is the classic hot-climate noir, while Killer Heat struggles to push the temp into the upper 70s.

Performance Worth Watching: Could we watch Gordon-Levitt in anything? Absolutely. He’s an endearing presence who’s capable of elevating a mediocre film (like this one? Yes. Like this one) a notch or two, but he doesn’t have a lot of support in this one.

Memorable Dialogue: Sample sadboi Nick noir narration: “I don’t mind getting beat up. There’s a certain dignity to it. But that doesn’t mean I’m forgiving. If you hit me, I’m gonna hit you back.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Killer Heat is the same old story in an unusually picturesque locale. Hey bad things happen in paradise too is the underlying conceit, but those bad things feature the usual, worn-out assemblage of mystery-noir elements: Corrupt Rich People, the Girl Who’s Trouble, the Only Good Cop in Town, the PI with Psychological Baggage. Lacote delivers the usual bevy of third-act melodrama and twists, here rendered disappointingly rote and basic. The film is more like a laconic genre exercise than an insightful character study or compelling mystery.

Notably, Lacote based his script on the short story The Jealousy Man by Jo Nesbo , creator of pulp-novel detective Harry Hole, a character that died the death of a million memes after Michael Fassbender played him in the godawful serial-killer thriller The Snowman . If Killer Heat intends to tap into some parallel psychology between Nick’s personal struggles and the case he’s investigated, it’s half-hearted; it’s the frosting on a thoroughly bland murder-mystery cake. Nice photography and costumes and an attractive cast can’t compensate for a flimsy screenplay that’s about to blow away in a warmish breeze. The implication that Woodley and Gordon-Levitt might generate some of the titular heat is ultimately unfounded. This programmer isn’t killer, it’s filler.

Our Call: Killer Heat is astonishingly unmemorable. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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