Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Hot Spot Blu-ray Movie Review

Tepid at best.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 11, 2013

Note: This film is currently only available in this double feature: The Hot Spot / Killing Me Softly.

Shout! Factory is starting to release some double features on Blu-ray which pair tangentially related films together. Releases like this are almost always a hit or miss proposition, and that turns out to be the case with the two-fer offering varied but problematic modern noirs. The better of the two films on this release is undoubtedly Dennis Hopper’s 1990 opus The Hot Spot, a kind of fetid ménage a trois with Virginia Madsen essaying the kind of femme fatale role she seemed fated to play at that stage of her career, Jennifer Connelly as an apparently innocent young teenage girl who might nonetheless not be as naïve as she seems, and Don Johnson as a used car salesman who finds his libido torn between the two women. Killing Me Softly is a fitfully ambitious but ultimately abysmally failed English language outing by legendary Chinese auteur Chen Kaige, who attempts (pretty much completely without success) to infuse the noir genre with a heaping dose of metaphor and an almost soft core porn ambience. Heather Graham portrays a woman in an unhappy relationship who more or less stumbles into a tempestuous affair with a mountain climber played by Joseph Fiennes. Their incendiary interaction leads to a quick marriage, at which point the man’s troubled past starts rippling out into both of their lives.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Give Dennis Hopper credit where credit is due: most noirs play out in dark, shaded environments that somehow reflect the inner ambiguities of their characters. But The Hot Spot unfolds under the blistering Texas sun where heat waves shimmer seductively and electric fans attempt to convince a tiny town’s inhabitants that the air is alive. Of course that relentless sun might also account for why much of The Hot Spot seems, well, half baked. This florid and fetid entry in neo-noir is chock full of atmosphere, but it has neither the ineluctably tragic aspect that many noirs do, nor the visceral intensity that this genre tends to usually exploit in spades. Instead, this is like a slow motion noir, one where the ungodly heat has simply sucked the energy out of the participants, and they languorously go about their appointed rounds.

As a director, Hopper could either be completely unleashed (The Last Movie) or play it relatively straight and narrow (Colors). The Hot Spot finds Hopper probably tilting more toward the conservative side of things, but with several odd flourishes decorating the film, which wallows in mood, part of which is helped by some expressive production design. Don Johnson portrays drifter Harry Madox who wanders into a stifling Texas town and almost immediately gets a job as a used car salesman. Within mere days he’s enamored of seemingly virginal front office girl Gloria (Jennifer Connelly) and, a bit later, Dolly (Virginia Madsen), the blowsy trophy wife of the car dealership’s owner.

What Harry really seems interested in, however, is the almost comically understaffed local bank. A nearby fire alerts Harry to the fact that all of the bank employees simply mosey outside to witness the conflagration, and that sparks and idea (pun intended) in Harry’s always scheming mind. Harry is in fact a man on the make, though in this somewhat odd recreation of noir tropes, he seems to basically be a decent guy who has repeatedly gotten lost in the moral weeds.

A number of simmering subplots intersect, including a kind of Deliverance-esque backwoods guy named Sutton (William Sadler), who seems to have an unexpected hold over Gloria, and the precarious health of Dolly’s husband George (Jerry Hardin). Harry ultimately gets involved with both women, though his interest in Gloria seems more romantic than sexual, while his interest in Dolly in nothing but sexual. These various strands collide in a climax that’s fairly gruesome but also kind of funny.

While the plot here has many of the traditional elements of classic noir, things don’t really gel in a visceral way, at least until the final third or so of the film. Part of this is due to the pacing, which is almost glacial at times, rather ironic given the film’s overheated setting. The Hot Spot clocks in at over two hours and would have been manifestly aided by some judicious trimming. There are also perhaps too many crimes in this film. While the emphasis should probably be on Harry’s scheme to rob the bank, we also get a whole glut of sidebars of various illicit activity involving Gloria, Dolly and Sutton. It ultimately makes this would be noir devolve to the level of a trashy soap opera.

There are some saving graces here, none more so than the delicious Virginia Madsen, who seems to be in on the joke that she’s not exactly appearing in a modern day classic. She’s sly and seductive and always seems to be just slightly winking at the audience. She also has the film’s best lines, including the classic interchange with Harry where she’s says “There are only two things to do in this town, and one of them is watching TV”. It turns out Harry doesn’t have a television. Hopper also stages even small scenes very well. There's a fantastic moment when Harry does an errand for Dolly and shows up at her palatial mansion. When she opens the door, a sudden breeze seductively blows her long blonde hair back from her face. Whether or not this was actually staged is debatable, but it's a great "reveal" of this character.

Johnson and Connelly are kind of a mixed bag, perhaps surprisingly. Connelly’s role is admittedly pretty thankless, that of the veritable “good girl” who has a few secrets in her past that she finally has to confess in a tearful scene with Harry. Johnson on the other hand perhaps plays his part a bit too close to the vest, at least some of the time. His best scenes are when he finally explodes in rage, and he brings a rather unexpected intensity to these moments.

The Hot Spot is finally a film that has some effective elements but which never has the inexorable quality it really should. Fans of Madsen may well want to check it out, however, for the actress creates an indelible, unforgettable character in Dolly Harshaw.

The Hot Spot Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Hot Spot is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. It's frankly been several years since I saw this film on the previously released DVD, but I have a fairly clear memory of it being a somewhat brighter presentation than it is on this new Blu-ray. I can't authoritatively state which version most accurately recreates the original theatrical exhibition as I never saw The Hot Spot in a theater (I frankly don't even think it played in my home town, at least that I can recall). The elements here are in very good shape overall, with only some very minor scratching and speckling to report. While the image seems a tad dark to me, colors are very accurate looking and nicely saturated. Everything is rather soft looking, without any real "pop", however, Fine detail is also in the middling range. Grain tends to overwhelm the image in the darkest sequences. This is a frankly mediocre to okay presentation of a similarly scaled film.

The Hot Spot Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Hot Spot's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix is very good, and is especially nice due to the glut of great source cues Hopper has included in the film. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented, and while there's not a lot of "wow" factor in the mix, everything is well prioritized and there's absolutely no damage of any kind to report.

The Hot Spot Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

The Hot Spot Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Hot Spot is long on mood and character but rather surprisingly short on story and ultimate impact. I personally think things would have been helped immeasurably by trimming the film by at least a half hour and also removing at least one of the sidebar "crimes" (notably one that isn't really even a crime). But there are pleasures to be had here despite the film's generally lackluster feel, including a great turn by Virginia Madsen, who reinvents the femme fatale in her own unmistakable image.