Sarah Ashburn And Mullins: Film Analysis

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Imagine that you were a police officer, dedicating your life to make your jurisdiction a better place. Would you allow an FBI agent to barge in and save the day? Or would you continuously fight to be seen as an equal partner in the case? In The Heat Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) attempts to kick Boston police officer Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) off a case that involves taking down the leader of a major drug ring in the Boston area. But, Mullins will not have it, so she fights to keep her spot on the case and teams up with Ashburn. Although an unlikely pair that cannot be any more opposite, the two complement one another extremely well during their efforts to take down Larkin.
Special Agent Sarah Ashburn is an uptight, …show more content…

Ashburn is able to pick up on details that her crew missed in their search; for instance, she is able to collect both drugs and guns which allowed her to arrest two men. In this scene, both Bullock and the director (Paul Feig) worked together to portray Ashburn as the screenplay writer (Katie Dippold) intended; an extremely confident and intelligent agent. But, once she meets Mullins, the audience is able to observe how strait-laced she is. The dramatic difference between Ashburn and Mullins only solidifies how stuffy Ashburn is. However, as Ashburn spends more and more time with Mullins, she begins to relax, say what she feels, and no longer hesitates to do something without thinking it through beforehand. This is a complete one eighty from the Ashburn the audience was introduced to at the beginning of the film. As the film progresses Bullock and Feig succeeded in creating a solid character out of Ashburn by continuously adding depth to her …show more content…

One hour and thirty minutes into the film, there was a scene where Ashburn and Mullins were arguing and between cuts Ashburn’s hair was not behind her hair in one shot while the next it was without Ashburn moving her hair. Then eighteen minutes later, Mullins was given a medal and it was placed around her neck, originally the medal was twisted, but between shots the medal fluctuated from being twisted into being straight to being twisted once again. These inconsistencies did not take away from the plot of the film, however it was distracting. As the positions changed between shots it was difficult for me to focus on what was occurring during the scene because I was not sure at first if the hair and medal actually changed position. I actually rewound the film to see if they moved. These petty errors in editing took away from the audience’s focus. This only happened twice, toward the end of the film, in basic scenes, but the errors slightly disengaged the audience and took away from the action/comedy. Feig and the editing crew should have picked up on these beginner mistakes before the film was published.
The Heat took the traditional good cop, bad cop roles and put a spin to them, adding humor between the polar opposite (in both looks and personality) main characters. The film had its weaknesses with inconsistencies in filming, nonetheless Feig was able to direct a solid action buddy

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