Cop Out - Geladen und entsichert

Boy this is a hard review to write! Wish I could avoid it, but that'd be a Cop Out, too! I thought Bruce could do no wrong, after ignoring The Bonfire of the Vanities, Hudson Hawk, and Death Becomes Her and his renewed persona in Pulp Fiction. But alas along comes this...ummm....mess of a film!

Maybe I don't like Tracy's sense of humour. Or maybe I'm tired of the cliched pairings of the "smart" and "dumb" buddy cop in films like Starksy and Hutch, Leathal Weapon, Chips, Bad Boys, R. I. P. D., The Heat, Rush Hour, Bulletproof, Ride Along, 48 Hours, Tango & Cash, and so, so, so many more!!! It gets a LOT repetitive. Or maybe it was the thin-as-paper plot!

Old cop needs money for his daughter's wedding because he doesn't want Jason Lee to pay for it, so he tries selling a valuable item only to be robbed by Stifler himself! Other cop has one liners and stupid faces. Chasing the crook they come across a Mexican cartel's snitch...bada-bing-bada-boo the good guys win by accident!

Still, it has Bruce Willis and Kevin Pollak in it!

Cop Out has a few laughs, but otherwise it's a surprisingly bland experience. It suffers from a generic storyline, questionable performances and the simple fact that almost none of the intended sources of humour achieve the desired effect.

Bruce Willis (an old timer) and Tracy Morgan (a new timer) are an odd couple indeed, but they had potential. The problem is that their levels of commitment to the film are polarized. Willis seems lazy and uninterested never putting much effort into it. Morgan on the other hand, tries way too hard. His larger than life style of crudeness is more clumsy than funny, and he upstages pretty much everyone else in the cast.

After about ten minutes, we have a pretty good idea of how this film is gonna play out, but we go with it in the hope that the trip is worth while. Unfortunately there are more silly contrivances and poorly written lines than there are laughs. The only time when Cop Out is funny (and remotely clever) is over a Good Cop Bad Cop routine that Willis and Morgan have. There are enough action movie jokes to make it clear to the audience that at least Kevin Smith has the self-awareness necessary for satire. But from what I saw, Cop Out isn't really a satire at all. It no better or worse than any other failed cop/comedy. I'm not sure if it's laziness or lack of thinking behind it, but Cop Out hasn't got the goods

After a clumsy operation trying to capture a drug dealer, the N.Y.P.D Detectives Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are suspended for one month by their Captain Romans (Sean Cullen). Jimmy decides to sell his rare baseball card to pay the expensive wedding of his daughter while his jealous partner believes that his wife is cheating him with their next-door neighbor. When Jimmy is selling his card to a memorabilia store, the place is stolen by two smalltime thieves and the detective loses his card. They track down the thieves and discover that he exchanged the card per drugs with the powerful drug lord Poh Boy (Guilermo Diaz). Jimmy and Paul seek out the gangster that proposes to trade the card per his car that had been carjacked. The detectives find the car but when they open the truck, they have a huge surprise.

"Cop Out" is a film that uses the old formula of combination of action and comedy that usually works. Kevin Smith is no longer that bold independent director from "Clerks" or "Chasing Amy" and follows the easy way of Hollywood making a conventional film, supported by the chemistry between Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. The story is entertaining and predictable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Tiras em Apuros" ("Cops in Trouble")

So help me, I found Cop Out to be not completely bad. Yes, that's a backhanded compliment, but I assure you that it's completely deserved. Cop Out, from its inane title to its derivative plot, has no business being anything but a hokey hoedown of banal buddy cop dopey behavior. And yet's it's not as gut-wrenchingly awful as all that.

Cop Out stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as veteran police partners on the trail of a gangbanger (Guillermo Diaz) who loves baseball memorabilia and who just happened to steal Willis' super-valuable baseball card, the one he was going to have to sell to finance his daughter's wedding; better to do that than have his wife's new, rich husband pay for it all.

But that cop-movie aspect is almost irrelevant. What matters, and the only thing that really puts this one in the same general universe as the likes of, say, Lethal Weapon (in terms of approach, not overall quality), is the thrust-and-parry repartee between straight-arrow Willis (a 180 from his John McClane character/caricature) and loose-cannon, uber-hip Morgan. They're funny together, and they're given funny things to say in funny situations. That helps a lot.

What's puzzling about this movie is that Kevin Smith directed it, the first of his that he didn't also write. That's puzzling because the dialog isn't really this movie's strong point. If I hadn't seen Smith's name attached to this in writing, I'd never have guessed he had had a hand in it.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter much, as it's just plain not terrible. You can tell I'm trying not to go overboard in my hyperbole, right? I want to present you with a level-headed, even-handed look at whether this is worth your time. And it is, with lowered expectations. It's amusing, although not for the whole family to watch.

There are so many films within this genre, plus a whole host on TV, that the risk of making it is that we have all seen it before. There is inevitably a touch of that in this film, but it does have some solid acting by all the main characters to give it some impetus at crucial times.

Cop Bruce Willis must raise face saving money for his daughter's wedding and he has worked out a legal way of doing so. From there we have a carefully interwoven sequence of events that lead us through the story to an ending not quite what you may expect.

It is enjoyable, funny in places, doesn't take itself too seriously, and whisks you through a couple of hours. Not everyone's cup of tea given the competition but still an okay film. Six out of ten.