`BOILING POINT' IS STYLISH AND CRISP

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993                   TAG: 9304170228
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEVIN THOMAS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
`BOILING POINT' IS STYLISH AND CRISP
Despite an action thriller ad campaign, "Boiling Point" is writer-director James B. Harris' superior contemporary film noir, originally called "Money Men," which is the title of the Gerald Petievich novel upon which it is based.
The ads tell us that Wesley Snipes plays "a cop who's reached the boiling point," where in fact his Jimmy Mercer is a Treasury agent of formidable self-control in pursuit of the person or persons who have killed his partner.
We're being led to expect another "Passenger 57" when what we've got instead is a stylish, reflective, deliberately B-scale movie that's more like Hawks' "The Big Sleep" and boasts an ensemble Grade A cast and emphasizes character over action.
"Boiling Point" is taut and crisp, and when it's required, Harris handles violence with swift dispatch rather than the large-scale fireworks that have become de rigueur.
Snipes' Mercer and Dennis Hopper's Red Diamond are men with seven-day deadlines. Mercer has been given a week to close the case himself on his partner's death before being transferred to Newark; Red, a lifelong con man with a taste for counterfeit money, has the same amount of time to come up with the cash he owes a mafioso (Tony Lo Bianco, in a chilling performance of false bonhomie), an old associate from whom he had hoped to borrow 50-grand to get started after having just finishing serving a five-year stretch at Terminal Island.
For 20 years the cliche of the law enforcement officer's personal life is that his wife has left him - or is about to do so, saying inevitably that his work is all wrong for a man with a family.
Typical of the freshness of "Boiling Point" is that just when Mercer receives this deathless remark from his ex-wife, both Diamond and his naive but lethal young protege Ronnie (Viggo Mortensen) are received with open arms by their women, who know better but care for them anyway.
If Valerie Perrine's attractive waitress is far, far better than Red deserves, Mercer does have the consolation of Lolita Davidovich's elegant and wise high-class call girl, who would consider going off with him but only if he doesn't resign from his job.
\ Boiling Point: Showing at Salem Valley 8 and Valley View Mall 6. Rated R for violence and language.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB