Boiling Point (I) (1993)

Red is an aging scam-artist who's just been released from prison together with Ronnie, a young and not-so-bright hoodlum who is easily manipulated. Their new business is to organize ... See full summary »

Director:

James B. Harris

Writers:

Gerald Petievich (novel), James B. Harris (screenplay)

Stars:

Wesley Snipes, Dennis Hopper, Lolita Davidovich

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Wesley Snipes	...	Jimmy Mercer
Dennis Hopper	...	Rudolph 'Red' Diamond
Lolita Davidovich	...	Vikki Dunbar
Viggo Mortensen	...	Ronnie
Seymour Cassel	...	Virgil Leach
Jonathan Banks	...	Max Waxman
Christine Elise	...	Carol
Tony Lo Bianco	...	Tony Dio
Valerie Perrine	...	Mona
James Tolkan	...	Levitt
Paul Gleason	...	Transaction Man
Lorraine Evanoff	...	Connie
Stephanie Williams	...	Sally Mercer (as Stephanie E. Williams)
Tobin Bell	...	Roth
Bobby Hosea	...	Steve

Storyline

Red is an aging scam-artist who's just been released from prison together with Ronnie, a young and not-so-bright hoodlum who is easily manipulated. Their new business is to organize fake-money sales and then kill the buyer to take his money; but when Ronnie kills an undercover secret service agent, his partner Jimmy Mercer vows revenge and is given one week to catch the killers before being transferred.

---

Plot Keywords:

hotel | disarming someone | police detective | night club | pump action shotgun | 

---

Taglines:

He's a cop who reached the Boiling Point

---

Genres:

Action | Crime | Drama

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence and language

Details

Country:

USA France

Language:

English

Release Date:

16 April 1993 (USA)

Also Known As:

Money Men

Filming Locations:

1605 Vine Street, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$10,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$10,058,318 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

StudioCanal

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Max Waxman, the character played by Jonathan Banks was also present in To Live and Die in L.A. played by Christopher Allport. Both films are adaptations from Gerald Petievich's novels.

---

Goofs

When the junkie girl blows up the house with built up gas from the stove, there is a flame showing lit in blue on one of the stove burners before she strikes the lighter; there would be no gas built up in the house... There would be no explosion.

---

Quotes

Tony Dio: Fuck you!
[Ronnie shoots him]
Rudolph 'Red' Diamond: Fuck me?
[laughs]

---

Connections

Referenced in Saturday Night Live: Jeff Goldblum/Aerosmith (1993)

---

Soundtracks

"Money Men Blues"
Written and Produced by Mitchell Marcoulier
Performed by Sweat Pea Atkinson

User Reviews

BOILING POINT (James B. Harris, 1993) **1/2

Eons ago it seems, Wesley Snipes was a box office commodity. So much so that promising material was refashioned to his action persona to the eventual detriment of the end product and fellow co-stars. This is exactly what happened with BOILING POINT – which, apart from being a rather meaningless title (Snipes' character never seems all that livid at any point {sic} during the picture!), is doubly superfluous for being identical to the superior Takeshi Kitano vehicle released three years earlier. On a personal note, I greatly enjoyed the location shooting in the Hollywood streets which effortlessly brought back nostalgic flashbacks to my three-month trip over there between November 2005-January 2006.

Writer/director Harris – formerly Stanley Kubrick's producer on his earlier films and the man behind one of the quintessential "Cold War" movies, THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (1965) – supplies some good lines and colorful roles to a fine group of veteran and up-and-coming actors: Dennis Hopper (particularly outstanding as the pitiful small-time criminal with delusions-of-grandeur), Viggo Mortensen (as his cold-blooded murdering partner), Tony Lo Bianco (as the big cheese in the L.A. underworld and Hopper's one-time associate), Seymour Cassel (as a hardened crook) and Tobin Bell (as a jailed counterfeiter). The women, represented here by Lolita Davidovich (as a high-class hooker that numbers both Snipes and Hopper among her clients) and Valerie Perrine (as Hopper's world-weary old flame), fare less well as their roles are comparatively underdeveloped.

Snipes is a cigar-chomping(!) Treasury agent hot on the heels of Hopper and Mortensen for having caused the death of one of his colleagues in an undercover operation. Apart from the fact that dying at the very beginning allows no time for the all-important friendship between the dead cop and Snipes to be established, I also found it hard to swallow the many would-be ironical run-ins that Snipes and Hopper have throughout the film: at a food stand, in a hotel toilet, in the bar where Perrine "slings hash", etc. Besides, the relationship between Snipes and Davidovich (which, we are told in the 'faux' "Where are they now?" end titles, even extends to her moving out with him to the next state he is transferred to!) is never believable as opposed to that of Hopper and Perrine. To the film's credit, the script also takes care to further enhance character development by delving briefly into the troubled relationships that Mortensen and Cassel are having with their current companions.