"Taking the Heat" (premiering on Showtime, Sunday, 9 p.m.) lurches the viewer through the teeming underbelly of New York City in a romantic action comedy that works despite its formula-studded plot and egregious violence.
What propels and ultimately salvages the movie is the sexy, comedic byplay between Lynn Whitfield and Tony Goldwyn as a female cop and her reluctant murder witness fleeing through murky bars and crack houses from a mob hit squad. The pair appear to run--and even swim--almost the length of Manhattan as Gotham breaks down around them in gridlock, power outages and a sweltering heat wave.
The comparatively unknown Goldwyn (who was the nasty businessman in "Ghost") is a genuine find as a light romantic leading man. And Whitfield (who came to prominence in "The Josephine Baker Story") deftly turns her cop's tough veneer into a spirited and fetching character.
As their interracial and star-crossed romance progresses from hate-at-first-sight to the dawning of love on a raft in the East River, their wacky odyssey is constantly interrupted by a murderous mobster named Muff (the crazed Alex Carter) who sprays automatic fire at them from the George Washington Bridge to Battery Park.
