User Reviews

When a man is killed in an explosion in rush hour traffic, Lt Tom Royko is surprised to see that the coroner's report states that the man exploded from within his own chest. He learns the man had a pacemaker and traces the surgeon who implanted it – Dr Gillian Hayes; however he narrowly saves Hayes' life when a patient she is working on explodes. With Hayes' help, the police identify a suspect but Royko is pushed to the limit as the bomber takes revenge on Hayes for the death of his son by detonating the pacemakers of a series of her patients.

Despite the fact that the plot summary sounded absurd I still decided to watch this film as I was in a very lazy mood and in no mood to be made to think by anything! In that regard alone the film succeeds because it is about as dumb and formulaic as I had assumed – one can only imagine the pitch meeting where this was thrown out there as 'it's like Speed meets ER'!

Action movie plots are rarely any great shakes but many of them survive because they have enough tension, action and pace to cover it's failings; of course this means that those films without these qualities will be exposed and weak as a result. That is the case here as, although there are plenty of bangs and men running with guns and shouting there is never anything approaching real suspense or tension. Instead all we have is one cliché after another combined with action that is less than spectacular and a budget that didn't stretch to even reasonable effects. The plot is full of holes, the funniest of which being the fact that nobody else in the world seems to be able to do heart work, resulting in Hayes rushing to perform surgery on 14 people rather than just getting 14 surgeons! The ending sees Hayes heartbeat linked to a bomb in Royko's son and I would have loved to have seen a really great ending where Royko is forced to kill Hayes to save his own son – but this was never going to happen and it is just yet another attempt by the film to set up an (illogical) ending that is supposedly involving and tense (although why they used Hayes to remove the device while also trying to keep her heart rate down is beyond me!)

The script reflects the silly plot and it is just full of action movie clichés and the like; the odd moment of conversation is usually contrived and rather basic and the whole lot is just best ignored as you try to get whatever value out of the bangs that you can. The characters are all one-dimensional and obvious – Royko is a kind action man with a young son (hmmm – wonder if that could be roped into a 'emotionally charged finale?'), Hayes is a good surgeon in a crisis of conscience and so on. Franklin is a badly thought out villain and it is to the film's shame that it does nothing of interest with him – we are never allowed to feel for him or understand his pain, his dead son is only a plot device for bangs, not part of the plot proper. As such the performances are pretty poor. Reinhold is pretty much a TVM kinda guy and this film shows why – he is clichéd as an action hero and doesn't fit the mould at all. Millar may have fluked her way into bigger films and in fairness she tries hard here but it still poor. She has to carry moral meaning that she doesn't get (script's fault) and her performance becomes just a matter of delivering action cliché and looking as scared and emotion as she can manage. Busfield hams it all up and he is of almost no value to the film.

Overall this is a really poor film that may please some people looking for a short, dumb action movie but it didn't do it for me. The action is lame, the plot silly and filled with so many plot holes it's a wonder it doesn't fall to bits, the dialogue is clichéd and weak and the performances poor simply because they have nothing to work with apart from silly material. A big waste of 90 minutes and not worth watching for the vast majority of us.

"Dead in a Heartbeat" - Brief But Apparent Spoiler

"Dead in a Heartbeat" is a great example of a horrible made-for-TV-thriller. It's got the fundamentals: Weak dialogue, one-dimensional characters, action, explosions, action, explosions, bad dialogue, and the wrap-up ending with one more unannounced explosion.

Judge Reinhold plays a cop dead on the heels of a killer who is killing off all the patients of a certain doctor (who does, of course, become a love interest later on in the film--like we didn't see it coming). Reinhold blows stuff up, and stuff blows up around Reinhold for some apparent reason. I'm still sitting in awe wondering what all the explosions were for. Literally, someone is walking through a grocery store, and suddenly the produce aisle blows up. Well, not really, but it's kinda like that in "Dead in a Heartbeat."

The dialogue is stiff, unmoving, and totally contrived. Really, what has the world come to when we get what we expect out of a TV thriller.

"Dead in a Heartbeat" is just like all those other made-for-TV thrillers out there that claim to be thrillers but are nothing more than watered down, two-hour-with-commercials presentations made to keep ratings up. Really, TBS, did you need this one on your resume? It's almost as forgettable as your so-called thriller "The Triangle" and "Invincible." I think it's time to look into the future and see what your channel's best at: offering mainstream movies, not TV movies.

1/5 stars -

John Ulmer