Killer Heat ★★½

DESPITE Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s popularity there have been surprisingly few film adaptations of his works.

Of the handful, they have ranged in quality from the very good, 2011’s Headhunters, to the disappointing The Snowman from 2017.

Killer Heat, based on one of his short stories and released in 2024, sits somewhere between.

On the island of Crete, a rich heiress’ adult son dies while free climbing a cliff in Crete. The dead man has a surviving twin brother whose wife is suspicious and believes her husband’s twin brother was murdered.

She hires a private detective to investigate. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Nick Bali who is based in Athens and has turned to alcohol after causing the breakdown of his marriage.

Despite his problems, Bali takes the job and slowly starts to unravel the mystery while seriously aggravating members of the dead man’s powerful family who run a successful shipping business and appear to be protected by local police.

It’s a decent story with a couple of nice twists but both Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley as the wife are a little miscast and fail to make the required impact in their key roles.

Watched on Apple TV.