Heart Condition (1990) New Line/Action-Comedy RT: 100 minutes Rated R (language, racial slurs, violence, nudity, sexual content, drug and alcohol use) Director: James D. Parriott Screenplay: James D. Parriott Music: Patrick Leonard Cinematography: Arthur Albert Release date: February 2, 1990 (US) Cast: Bob Hoskins, Denzel Washington, Chloe Webb, Ray Baker, Jeffrey Meek, Roger E. Mosley, Ja’net DuBois, Alan Rachins, Eva LaRue, Kieran Mulroney, Lisa Stahl, Diane Civita, Ron Taylor, Kendall McCarthy. Box Office: $4.1M (US)
Rating: **
Movies rarely come as schizophrenic as Heart Condition. This one is a particular doozy. It bills itself as an action-comedy. The premise, a ghost helping a cop solve his own murder, sounds comedic. There are times when it tries to be funny. It fails. There are a few scenes with action; a chase here and there, a shoot-out at the end. None of it works. There’s also a romance between the cop and a hooker that falls flat. That leaves us with a movie nobody expected to see when they bought their ticket. While I wouldn’t say that Heart Condition is a drama, it seems to want to explore racism in pre-Rodney King Los Angeles. It’s dark, nasty and gloomy. It’s not the light-hearted buddy comedy promised by ads. Whatever it is, it isn’t much.
Jack Moony (Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) is a poor excuse for a cop and an even poorer one for a human being. He smokes and drinks. He stuffs his face with greasy fatty foods. He’s rude, ill-tempered and slovenly. Worst of all, he’s an incredible racist. His calling a suspect the n-word not only costs him a promotion, it also gets him suspended. The suspect in question is Napoleon Stone (Washington, Glory), a corrupt lawyer who made Moony chase him down after an incident with a couple of hookers. One of the hookers is Crystal (Webb, Sid and Nancy), Moony’s ex-girlfriend. She’s one of those “heart of gold” types who only hooks to make enough money for art school.
Moony suffers a massive heart attack and has to get a transplant. When he wakes up, he’s horrified (and royally pissed) to learn he has the heart of a black man beating inside him. Not only that, the black man is Stone who was killed the same night Moony had his heart attack. When Moony finally returns to the force, much to the displeasure of his captain (Mosley, Magnum PI) who puts him behind a desk, Stone shows up to keep him in line. As you might expect, Moony is the only one who can see him making him appear crazy to his colleagues who see him walking around talking to himself. Stone follows him around, telling him not to smoke or eat junk food. What he really wants is for Moony to find out who killed him. His murder is connected to a sleazy pimp (Meek, Johnny Handsome) and the drug-related death of a conservative Senator. Crystal and another working girl were present. Stone was their lawyer. Get the idea?
I saw Heart Condition when it first came out in ’90 and haven’t seen it since…. until now, that is. I didn’t remember all that much about it other than the premise and not liking it. It looked great in the trailer. I thought how could it miss especially with two strong actors like Hoskins and Washington in lead. Oh, how naïve I was! I sat there in theater confused as to what I was watching. I had no idea how to take Heart Condition. It’s too gloomy to be funny. Its premise is too silly for the movie to be taken seriously. There’s hardly any action in it. I didn’t know what to think. It just left me cold. It dawns on me now that the fault lies not with me, but with the movie itself. It has no idea what it wants to be so it tries to be many things and succeeds at none. It still leaves me cold.
It would be both inaccurate and unfair to criticize the performances in Heart Condition. The actors make a sincere effort to overcome the confused screenplay. Hoskins is convincing as the bigoted cop forced to change his thinking by his new “partner”. Washington displays the easy charisma and likability that has carried him through many movies. These traits come in handy here as his character isn’t a good guy (at first). Webb is pretty good as Crystal, a basically decent person who becomes a pawn in a deadly game of “Come and Get Me” between the pimp, a sadistic sort who drugs people to keep them quiet, and Moony. It should be noted that a baby factors into the climax where Moony shoots a bunch of the pimp’s thugs (with the unseen Stone’s help) in an abandoned house.
The problem with Heart Condition isn’t in front of the camera, it’s behind it. It’s written and directed by James D. Parriott who mostly works on TV shows. He created the short-lived 80s show Misfits of Science. It says on IMDb that he directed a movie called Voyager from the Unknown with Jon-Erik Hexum and Meeno Peluce in ’82 but I’m pretty sure it was a made-for-TV job. I’ve never seen it, but if Heart Condition is any indication of the caliber of his work, I’m in no hurry to find a copy.
He directs Heart Condition with too heavy a hand. Taking a lighter approach to the material wouldn’t necessarily have prevented him from making his point about racism. On the contrary, he might have gotten it across more effectively. Of course, this is all academic; there’s still the matter of its identity crisis. The movie doesn’t know what it wants to be. Parriott isn’t sure either. It results in a movie audiences don’t know how to take. If audiences don’t know how to take a movie, they tend to leave it. That’s a wise decision where Heart Condition is concerned. It’s not a bad movie; it’s just a botched one. It’s a cinematic DOA.
