A good tasty noir, like "Love Lies Bleeding," always feels contemporary, even if set in the past; that's because it should feel as urgent as the love-and-death stakes it's about. "Killer Heat," on the other hand, while not quite so old-fashioned that it creaks, definitely plays like a mirage of detective noirs you've seen before. To start with: Could there be a worse title? It makes the movie sound like some straight-to-tape potboiler from the '80s starring Jim Belushi and Daphne Zuniga.
"Killer Heat" opens with the voice of its star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who has a way of sounding like Keanu Reeves' brainier brother), delivering one of those logy "hardboiled" philosophical nuggets to the audience ("The Icarus myth was set on the island of Crete. And apparently no one there had learned much from his story..
."). But just as you're ready to nod out, Gordon-Levitt, as a private investigator named Nick Bali in a hipster island fedora, meets Shailene Woodley, as the wealthy trapped wife of a shipping-company CEO based in Crete.
Her husband's brother has plunged to his death during a free-solo climb up a vertical rockface. But it's clear to her that foul play was involved. Woodley has a special version of the X Factor — not mere charisma (though she's got that too) but the ability to draw you right to the center of her.
.. Owen Gleiberman.
