I love lady warriors. Let us get that out of the way from the jump. Two fisted, gun toting, tough talking, tall walking Valkyries, putting the sexy smackdown on various reprobates who start out underestimating them, much to their chagrin. Be it the perps and villains they go up against or be it occasionally their less than supportive co-workers, they sometimes have to go it alone in the world to right a clear and present wrong.
In this case, we have FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock), a supremely skilled and trained FBI agent. Her professional competence as a field agent is beyond reproach. However, her ability to deal with people is not. She knows she is skilled, educated and talented and wears it on her sleeve. So her cocksure attitude and condescending arrogance turns off her comrades and hampers her efforts to reach management positions in the Bureau. What little glimpse you get of her social life is the same, as she is single. All caps SINGLE. She even has to borrow the neighbor's cat. Yeah. Sad.
So, when she is given a chance to go to Boston on a convoluted drug perp case that might set her up for that management position she is gunning for, she gamely takes it on. Which brings her into contact with Boston PD Detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthey), a skilled, streetwise, but foul mouthed bull in the China stop style street cop. Where Sarah is awkward, shielded and "trained and polished by the book smooth", Shannon is no barriers, in your face, no sacred cows in her approach. Sara is all logic and data, while Shannon is intuition, impulses and street awareness. Naturally, the two of them don't mix well at first.
But eventually, as the two of them get to know each other and find out that they are both decent people who bring some real skills to this job and they are both needing a real friend in this business of the enforcement of law, both their natural reticence begins to melt away and they go from being reluctant team mates to true comrades in arms.
Which is good, because they aren't only dealing with the expected criminal element, but they have traitors in their own ranks.
Sandra Bullock does what she does. She is the kind of actress with a particular style and you either liker her or you don't. I like her. She most certainly plays the smart, capable but awkward Special Agent role well.
Melissa McCarthy, I've never seen her in a film before. She's been in a few, according to her bio. She apparently was also in Gilmore Girls, which what very little I've seen, from what I can tell kinda dealt in sarcastic women as it's stock and trade. That's pretty much what she did here, just with more physicality and F bombs. I really enjoyed her Detective Mullins, in all her crassness and loneliness as well.
Paul Feig, going all the way back to Freaks and Geeks, pretty much has established himself as the kind of comedy writer who can do funny people without making them seem like just carriers for jokes, which is against type when it comes to much American comedy writing for TV and films. His funny people are just people who can be funny, rather than characters who exist to be funny.
The distinction is important.
I enjoyed The Heat. It was heartwarming on a cold, cold November day.
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