Red Heat (1988) on Netflix
Moscow detective Ivan Danko is sent to Chicago to bring back Viktor Rostavili, the Georgian drug lord behind his partner's death. There, detective Art Ridzik is assigned as his minder.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.2/1082,246 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes69%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Moscow, police officers Ivan Danko and Yuri Ogarkov move against Viktor Rostavili, a Georgian drug kingpin. Rostavili gets away, and Ogarkov is killed in the shooting. Rostavili surfaces in Chicago, arrested there over a minor traffic violation, and Danko is flown in to collect him, told not to explain why the extradition is wanted. Chicago detectives Art Ridzik and Max Gallagher greet him, and while Danko questions Rostavili he takes a key off him. On the way to the airport the group is ambushed and Rostavili escapes. Danko stays in Chicago against the wishes of the local authorities to hunt him down, and Ridzik is told to watch him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Red Heat (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Walter Hill has said Red Heat's premise grew out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent: since it made him hard to cast credibly as an American, Hill decided to make him a Soviet policeman instead, betting American audiences would accept an unapologetic Soviet hero who never defects.
- The film's scene of Danko discovering cocaine hidden in a henchman's wooden leg came from a rejected script by writer Harry Kleiner; Walter Hill didn't want the rest of the script but paid Kleiner just for that scene, later calling it the best in the movie.
- Danko's fictional Soviet pistol was a real prop, built by gunsmith Tim LaFrance in San Diego from a modified Desert Eagle and nicknamed the "Hollywood Eagle" on set; after the film's release, copies of it were actually sold commercially in the US as the "Pobyrin pistol".
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $8 million to star in Red Heat, and the finished film carries a dedication to Bennie Dobbins, a member of the crew who died during the Austria shoot.
- Red Heat filmed for four days in Moscow's Red Square, made possible only by a sudden thaw in US-Soviet relations, but uncertainty over where the crew could actually shoot meant most "Moscow" scenes were faked in Budapest, with Hungary's Buda Castle standing in for the Soviet Ministry of Home Affairs.
- Composer James Horner reused musical motifs from his own score for 48 Hrs. in Red Heat, material he would recycle again to varying degrees in Commando and Another 48 Hrs., part of a broader habit of reworking earlier scores, his own and other composers'.
