Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley star in a very boring murder mystery streaming on Amazon
Originally known as the far more appealing The Jealousy Man in print, the anonymously retitled mystery plays less like a real movie and more like a case-of-the-week episode of an ITV crime drama (without credits it’s not even 90 minutes long). Joseph Gordon-Levitt, revisiting similar yet considerably lesser territory to his role in Rian Johnson’s stylish 2005 thriller Brick, plays a run-of-the-mill private detective named Nick who is called to investigate a seemingly cut-and-dried death on a Greek island. Leo (Richard Madden) has fallen off a steep mountain edge while free-climbing, a reckless accident to most but to his sister-in-law Penelope (Gordon-Levitt’s Snowden co-star Shailene Woodley), it looks like murder. She’s married to his identical twin brother and at the mercy of his wealthy, and dangerous, family.
Nick’s by-the-numbers investigation then begins, aided by some really rather heinous, at times parody-level, voiceover (“Sometimes you use a carrot, sometimes you use a stick, sometimes you just lie your ass off”) as flashbacks to his past as a jealous husband, to a cruelly underused Abbey Lee, hint at something deeper at play.
Depth, however, is not one of Killer Heat’s strong points, the mystery unravelling with such a formulaic lack of surprise that we’re convinced something twistier and more unusual is being kept for the finale. But the trudge to get there is without reward, as if we’re being punished for being dumb enough for sticking with it, and the final reveals are pretty much exactly what one would expect from the synopsis, almost comically so. This would maybe be less egregious if there was something else here to engage but it’s all so boringly pedestrian from start to finish. The private dick, the femme fatale, the smoldering husband, the mob matriarch, all speaking in cliches in rushed scenes that never allow any of them to transcend stereotype. Woodley fares the best, adding some emotional weight to her dialogue, treating the material with a humanity that’s otherwise absent. Gordon-Levitt is closer to a Leslie Nielsen parody but without any jokes, also devoid of smart tricks and charm, while Madden is left to a repetitive cycle of clenching his jaw and squeezing his biceps.
It makes for a head-scratching follow-up for director Philippe Lacôte, whose imaginative and unconventional prison thriller Night of the Kings was a critical hit after a Venice premiere back in 2020. Aside from brief glimpses of beautiful scenery, this is as drably made, horribly lit and creatively uninspired as streaming films come, made more distracting by characters insisting on a luxury we never get to see (Woodley teasing an extravagant party is hilariously followed up by a few people milling around on a small boat).
Killer Heat is now available on Amazon Prime
Killer Heat on Amazon Prime Video is a new murder mystery movie that likely won’t be difficult for viewers to solve.
The Prime original movie, which began streaming today, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, and Richard Madden. Directed by Philippe Lacôte, and written by Roberto Bentivegna and Matt Charman, the film is based on a short story called “The Jealousy Man,” written by best-selling Norwegian author, Jo Nesbø. In the movie, the story takes place on a remote Greek island, and the movie was filmed on the Greek island of Crete.
Despite the well-known cast, Killer Heat received little to no promotion before it snuck onto Prime Video. But no doubt fans of all three lead actors will be drawn to watch the movie on Amazon.
Nick Bali (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a private investigator who’s been hired by a Greek woman, Penelope Vardakis (Shailene Woodely), to investigate the death of her brother-in-law, Leo Vardakis (Richard Madden). The official police story is that Leo fell while “free solo” climbing up a cliffside, but Penelope doesn’t buy it.
Penelope’s husband, Elias Vardakis (also Madden), is Leo’s identical twin brother, and also enjoys free solo rock climbing. Elias is the CEO of a big shipping company in Greece, and he was always the golden child compared to his brother, Leo. He even stole Penelope from Leo—back in school, Leo had a crush on Penelope, first. Can you see where this is going yet?
Nick apparently can’t! Nick pretends to be working for the Greek version of the CIA, and tells Elias that the agency sent him, an American, because of Elias’s company’s American investors. He interrogates Elias about his relationship to his brother, and discovers that the two had a fight, and that the brothers are “monozygotic twins,” meaning they have identical DNA. Surely you know where this going now, right?
During his investigation, Nick befriends a local cop, Georges (Babou Ceesay), who also suspects something is up and is one of the few people willing to take on the powerful Vardakis family. Nick and Georges note that in the autopsy of Leo, he had broken fingers. How did that happen? Nick also deduces that Penelope was having an affair with Leo before he died—he finds one of Penelope’s hair ties in Leo’s apartment. Penelope admits to the affair, and tells Nick she’s extremely unhappy in her marriage. Elias sleeps around like a playboy, but “won’t let” Penelope leave. She says he’s threatened to kill himself or her, if she does leave him. Yikes!
Nick decides to look into the ways that the potential murderer could have fled the scene, after killing Leo. The only way to get to and from the beach is by boat. Nick and Georges find records of a fishing boat that was out on the water the day Leo died, and go looking for it. But by now, Elias and his cronies are onto Nick and have threatened him to stop sniffing around. When Nick and Georges are caught looking for the fishing boat, Elias’s thugs shoot and kill Georges.
Even though Nick seemingly gets zero new clues from the fishing boat excursion, his grief over Georges’s death causes him to finally realize what has been obvious to the audience all along: Leo isn’t dead. Elias is dead. Leo killed his brother, and took over his identity.
Nick confronts Leo-as-Elias at his home, in front of Penelope and her mother-in-law, Audrey (Clare Holman). Nick explains that he looked up whether the Vardakis shipping company had any American investors… and they don’t! But Leo-as-Elias didn’t question that when Nick said it to him at the beginning of the movie. Why? Because he wasn’t Elias, he was Leo, and he doesn’t know anything about the company.
Nick also explains that being monozygotic twins—with the exact same DNA—means that Leo was able to assume Elias’s identity. The autopsy wouldn’t be able to prove it otherwise. Leo-as-Elias turns to Penelope for support, claiming that she is his alibi: She was with him at the time of his brother’s death. But Penelope doesn’t play along, much to Leo’s dismay. She claims she was swimming, and can’t vouch for where her husband was.
Nick says it was Elias who was climbing that day. Leo had snuck around on the path, up to the top of the cliff, and waited for his brother to reach the top. Then he stomped on Elias’s hands—breaking his fingers—causing him to fall to his death. For the final touch, Leo took his brother’s wedding ring and assumed the identity of Elias. Then he drove away on his getaway boat with one of his goons.
Penelope and Audrey are convinced, especially after Leo all but confesses that it’s all true. Enraged, Audrey—who always loved Elias more than Leo—takes out a gun. Where’d she get that?! She shoots and kills her own son. Wow, kinda harsh, mom! But a convenient way to wrap up the ending.
The job seemingly done, Nick packs up his stuff and gets on a plane. But before it takes off, he realizes something. He leaves the plane to confront Penelope: She didn’t hire him because he was good, she hired him because he was a mess. You see, Nick recently left his wife and kids in New York, after he found out his wife was cheating on him. Penelope wanted a detective that she could lead around… because she was in on it.
As she told Nick, she felt trapped in her marriage to Elias. So she conspired with Leo to kill his brother. She was the one who told Leo that Elias would be climbing that day. However, Leo claiming Elias’s identity was never part of the plan. Leo did that all on his own, because he wanted to claim Penelope. Elias dying was supposed to set Penelope free, but instead it just imprisoned her with a new man: Leo. So Penelope hired a detective and left him clues—like her hair tie in Leo’s apartment—to expose what Leo had done, in order to free herself. Sure!
Nick tells Penelope he doesn’t blame her for killing her husband. Just girlie things, you know. Penelope encourages Nick to return to New York to his child. He takes her advice. In the last scene of the film, Nick calls his daughter and tells her he’s coming home. With that, the movie ends.
So there you have it! C’mon, did you really think it wasn’t going to be a case of switched identity? If there are twins involved in the murder mystery, it’s always a switched identity. That’s how it works!
