TV Review : Lots of Heat, Little Light in HBO’S ‘Fever’

The made-for-HBO film “Fever” (which debuted Saturday and plays again tonight at 8) is a buddy movie without laughs but with more than enough of the requisite brutality and blood-drenched bonding.

“Sometimes there’s such a thing as being too goddam civilized,” says the nicer buddy, Sam Neill, to his already uncivilized partner, Armand Assante, after being initiated in the thrill of inflicting violence. Sometimes there’s such a thing as being too gosh-darn predictable, too: Have you ever heard of a buddy picture in which the nastier fellow learns how to become more like the genteel guy?

As a brutal ex-con and a cool attorney, respectively, Assante and Neill are the odd couple compelled by circumstance to team up in search of the sultry babe they both love, who has been kidnaped by some of Assante’s old prison adversaries. When they finally recover her, which of these two obnoxious studs will fabulous Marcia Gay Harden, the third point in our love triangle, pick? May we suggest none of the above, Marcia?

Soon after getting paroled from the joint, Assante shows up at ex-flame Harden’s doorstep to rekindle their romance, not caring much that she’s settled in with respectable Neill. Assante earns his insufferability stripes by repeatedly announcing to both of them he’s going to steal her away; Neill earns his by acting more and more like his rival, even forcing himself on his live-in love in what nearly amounts to date rape.

It takes nearly half the length of “Fever” for the kidnaping to take place and finally set some action in motion in place of the droning macho talk. The ransom established by the still-incarcerated chief villain (Joe Spano, cast against mild type) involves Assante committing three felonies, which Neill at first reluctantly and soon readily joins in on.

Aside from the aforementioned embarrassing scene in which Neill announces that he’s found his true nature at last--”I wanted to kill him. It’s like everything suddenly was real,” he babbles, on a wide-eyed high--”Fever” is rarely all that terrible, and just as infrequently credible or compelling. Sometimes there’s such a thing as being completely negligible.