The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance
Anthony Michael Hall as TV interviewer Mike Engel
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:19Read transcript
- Nominees: Nestor Carbonell as Mayor Antonio Garcia, Joshua Harto as Coleman Reese, Anthony Michael Hall as TV interviewer Mike Engel and William Fichtner as the bank manager; added is Richie Costner (as transcribed) as the Chechen, whom only the three hosts came to know as the corrupt mayor in True Detective season two, giving a very good performance with a very bad Count Dracula accent.
- One host gives the award to Anthony Michael Hall for embodying the action-movie trope of the TV crew always present when something important happens, the William Atherton role from Die Hard, with the accountant going on the local Charlie Rose to reveal the Batman after the commercial.
- A second host also lands on Anthony Michael Hall, because swole late-career Hall never fails to stop them in their tracks, and asks whether he only works in Nolan movies now.
- One more name: Chin Han as Lau, a Chinese corporate titan laundering money for Gotham's gangsters, called the definition of a heat check; every conversation he goes for it, toe to toe with Morgan Freeman, moving all the mob's money without telling them, and never finding it odd that Lucius Fox turns up to check him out right after.
- Fox breaks the building's one no-phones rule, does a switcheroo and brings down a multi-billion-dollar corporation with a cell phone, which leads to Batman illegally extraditing Lau from China via skyhook; Lau then becomes a living MacGuffin who must be protected to testify against all of Gotham's criminals.
- Why is Lau needed when the Chechen could surely be prosecuted; it is read as an early sell-the-movie-in-China move and as the cynical choice to hand the most convoluted part of the plot to an Eastern character because he is mysterious anyway.
- The Hong Kong shoot is compared to the hosts' own deep-in-the-weeds blog obsessions: Bale insisting on standing on the skyscraper himself, Alan Horn cutting a $35 million check to send 400 people to shoot in IMAX when Gotham or CGI would have been fine.
- Bruce's cover story compounds the absurdity: landing a plane in the ocean because he cannot use Hong Kong airport, a yacht with ballet dancers, Michael Caine surrounded by companions in the South China Sea, mystery pilots; it all goes back to Lau, and a Lau trilogy would probably get greenlit.