FROM:Journal-Register April 1993

"Boiling Point" maybe simmers a little, but never really boils. And that's not altogether a bad thing, either, because more than enough movies boil up and over the pot.

With its ominous title and publicity photos of an armed and scowling Wesley Snipes, "Boiling Point" is packaged as standard chase-and-shoot cops stuff. But its roots are in the sort of 1950s, tough talking, B-grade crime movie that would have starred Robert Mitchum or Dana Andrews. And with its cozy circle of colorful crooks and losers, it's like spending an hour and a half with Elmore Leonard.

"Boiling Point" is a panorama of pugs that include counterfeiters, hookers and shady lawyers with names like Max Waxman. With only one really bad guy in its ensemble -- you'll recognize him as the one with the assault weapon -- it's about dirty money guys trying to outfox dirtier money guys.

Everybody -- even the good guys -- is up against a deadline. Jimmy Mercer, a treasury agent played by Snipes, has seven days to find out who killed a fellow agent, or he's going to be banished to Newark. Red Diamond (Dennis Hopper), a weasly though slightly charming con man just out of prison, has a week to pay back a $50,000 debt. Ronnie, his psycho partner (Viggo Mortensen) is apt to snap at a moment's notice.

"Boiling Point" has an odd symmetry with its circle of characters crossing paths and pulling closer and closer together until . . . well, until nothing terribly eventful happens. But that's part of the movie's unpretentious charm.

Jimmy, Red and Ronnie have something in common. In a humorous cross-cutting of scenes that is director James B. Harris' best moment, they're all told by the former women in their lives that they intend to remain just that -- former.

Jimmy longs to see his young son, but his wife stands guard, with her new boyfriend, at the doorway. Red's ex, a sassy, gum-snapping waitress played by the no-longer glamorous Valerie Perrine, reminds him that he forced her to prostitute herself (presumably NOT with Robert Redford) to pay off his debts. Ronnie's ex-girlfriend calls him (and I don't think there's a card for this) a piece of dog----that will only drag her down. Hey, who says there are no strong parts for women? "Boiling Point" snarls with brusque, world-weary lines like "I did a nickel at T.A." Translation: I served a five-year prison term at Terminal Island." Reflecting on her occupational hazards as a prostitute named Vicki, Lolita Davidovich, whom some might remember from "Blaze," philosophizes that "In my business you don't think about what you do, just the time it takes to do it."

Is Dennis Hopper capable of anything other than a weird performance? With his hair dyed red and wearing hideous brown suits, his Red Diamond scuttles about in near-comic herky-jerky spasms. A thorough scoundrel, though a bit of a ladies man, he lives not for phony bills but to dance romantically to "Dream" and other big band sounds played by the Danny Man Orchestra.

In its own peculiar way, "Boiling Point" is the first potboiler that swings.