Red Heat

RED HEAT is yet another of those buddy movies from the 1980s . Cops set up a sting , the bad guy kills a cop during an escape , turns out that the dead cop is the hero's best buddy and he's going to stop at nothing to get the bad guy with all this happening in the first 15 minutes of the movie . If all this sounds similar to 48 HOURS that's possibly because it was directed and co written by Walter Hill who also directed and co wrote the aforementioned movie . It might not be original in structure but it's certainly entertaining due in no small part of the two protagonists - Serious communist cop from the Ukraine , wise cracking Chicago cop - playing off each other in a story that could have so often become predictable and boring due to its familiar plot . It's hardly groundbreaking in concept but when a film made in 1988 starts hinting that gangsters from the Soviet Union will be taking charge of much of the black market in drugs , this alone gives it an edge missing in so many of its contemporaries