24 Hours of Movies: Buddy Cops!

 by Patrick Bromley

A marathon of one of my very favorite genres.

The buddy cop movie is a genre I can watch at any time and, more importantly, regardless of its quality. Such is my affection for the formula that even the weakest entry is going to provide some enjoyment. To test this theory, let's watch 24 consecutive hours of buddy cops. They're gonna solve this case...if they don't kill each other first!

10 am - Tango & Cash (1989, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)

I originally thought about starting at the beginning with something like Busting but I realized that's for more advanced studies and not the right foot on which to begin. This movie, on the other hand, is exactly how we want to start things off: pure nonsense dripping with testosterone, bursting at the seams with oversized action and stupid one-liners, and Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell literally having a dick measuring contest. Here's a rare case in which a troubled production actually improved the movie because all of the chaos and nonsense happening behind the scenes translates directly to the finished film. It's practically a live-action cartoon, violent and silly and totally self-aware. The score is a banger and Kurt Russell walks away with the whole thing because he rules.

Noon - Busting (1974, dir. Peter Hyams)

Now that we are appropriately warmed up, we can graduate to more advanced studies like Peter Hyams proto-buddy cop drama Busting, in which Robert Blake and prime Elliott Gould play partners trying to take down a crime boss only to have their hands tied by departmental corruption. The two actors have incredible chemistry and invent a new type of delivery best described as Speed Mumbling. The film's cynicism is perfectly in keeping with the decade out of which it was born, and while it may be early in our marathon for such a bummer ending, it just means we have nowhere to go but up.

1:30 pm - Yes, Madam (1985, dir. Corey Yuen)

And up we go! One of only a handful of female-led buddy cop movies (we'll have at least one more later) is among my favorite Hong Kong action films of the 1980s, starring Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock -- two of the best to ever do it -- in a story of cops in China trying to recover a microfilm containing evidence of illegal activity.  Whereas Busting is a gritty, bitter pill, Yes, Madam is pure sugar rush: a hyper-energetic ballet of combat courtesy of two incredible stars, director Corey Yuen, and producer Sammo Hung. The legendary team-up of Yeoh (in her first starring role) and Rothrock alone would make this a classic, but it's a kickass action movie on top of that casting. I just wish such a large portion of the runtime wouldn't have been handed over to those two goofballs.

3:15 pm - 2 Guns (2013, dir. Baltasar Kormákur)

Running a movie marathon isn't just about playing great movie after great movie. Sometimes you want some filler so the highs feel higher. That's 2 Guns, a serviceable buddy cop programmer in which Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg play a DEA agent and a naval officer, respectively, who have to team up when they're burned by their agencies over some stolen money. There's almost nothing remarkable about this movie except the presence of Denzel and Paula Patton as his fellow DEA agent girlfriend, but that's enough for a casual viewing, especially this early in our 24 hours. Wahlberg does his best to ruin things but his character is meant to be obnoxious so I can forgive it a little. Did I mention Paula Patton?

5:15 - K-9 (1989, dir. Rod Daniel)

When programming a marathon of movies all in the same genre, it can become challenging to find ways to mix things up so it doesn't just feel like we're watching the same film 12 times in a row. One way of doing that in this instance is by programming at least one interspecies buddy cop movie, so I'm going with K-9 because a) Turner & Hooch would just leave us all crying and b) I'm not going to program Theodore Rex. One of my hottest film takes is that I don't mind Jim Belushi as an actor, and while this movie puts that to the test (his schtick has always been false bravado and machismo, turned up to 10 here), it's offset by the presence of adorable German Shepherd Jerry Lee as his partner. They make a cute couple. I just saw this for the first time when putting this marathon together and was expecting something super PG-family-friendly; instead, this movie is surprisingly horny and violent. Not all of it involves the dog.

7 pm - Lethal Weapon (1987, dir. Richard Donner)

Our Primetime Pizza slot goes to one of the best buddy cop movies of all time, written by a young up-and-comer named Shane Black and directed by veteran stalwart Richard Donner at the top of his game. Danny Glover is the buttoned-up family man and Mel Gibson is the maniac cop with a death wish; the pair team up to solve a murder that eventually reveals much larger criminal dealings at work. This may be an unpopular opinion -- the consensus seems to be online that 2 is the superior film -- but I think the original Lethal Weapon is a pretty perfect buddy cop movie. There's humor in the film but it's not silly and is rooted in character rather than the total fuckarounds to which the series would eventually give itself over. The dynamic between the pair is the best it would get, it has the strongest villain, and the action has true stakes because Donner and Black mean that shit.

9 pm - The Heat (2013, dir. Paul Feig)

Outside of Yes, Madam, there aren't a ton of female-led buddy cop movies, and the ones that do exist aren't especially good. The Heat is a good one. Directed by Paul Feig at a time that meant something, it pairs Sandra Bullock as an uptight FBI agent and Melissa McCarthy as a foul-mouthed Boston cop. The two have good chemistry and are very funny together, particularly as the story progresses to a point where they stop bickering and learn to care about one another, a theme that the film actually earns. Unlike, say, Running Scared -- which is one of the best buddy cop movies ever made and functions as both a comedy and a successful cop movie -- The Heat is very much a comedy that just happens to be about buddy cops. Like a lot of post-Apatow comedies of this period, this one is overstuffed and overlong; with 20 minutes cut out I'd be willing to bump it up a full star.

11 pm - Alien Nation (1988, dir. Graham Baker)

As we gradually head into the overnight section of our buddy cop marathon, I want to start mixing genres. Alien Nation, a movie I'm pretty sure I've seen only once, combines a hard boiled detective movie with science fiction in a way that's more interesting than it is entirely successful (again, that's only my memory talking). James Caan is paired up with Mandy Patinkin, playing the first alien member of the LAPD under prosthetics, attempting to solve a murder and not destroy the tenuous relationship between humans and Newcomers, the name given to the aliens on Earth. I'm mostly programming this here so I can find out if it's any good because I don't remember. I do know it inspired a FOX television series that was beloved in certain circles and ran for only one seasons though I would have sworn it ran for five.

12:30 am - Dead Heat (1988, dir. Mark Goldblatt)

Editor-turned-director Mark Goldblatt only made two movies, both action films and both for New World. His second feature was the 1989 adaptation of The Punisher, a bad Punisher movie but a terrific '80s action movie. His first, Dead Heat, is going to be perfect for the midnight slot because it's one of the few buddy cop horror movies I can think of, in which a typically delightful Treat Williams (along with partner Joe Piscopo) is killed and resurrected as a zombie trying to solve his own murder. The comic relief from Piscopo never, ever lands, but the rest of the film has a great sense of humor and a zippy pace, plus cool practical and makeup effects courtesy of Steve Johnson.

2 am - The Hidden (1987, dir. Jack Sholder)

Here's another buddy cop movie infused with sci-fi elements, like Alien Nation teaming a street cop (Michael Nouri) with an extra-terrestrial visitor (Kyle Maclachlan) in search of a life form with the ability to jump from host to host. It's a premise so good that it would be ripped off a few years later for Jason Goes to Hell. Director Jack Sholder's background as an editor really comes through here, as this is a pulpy and propulsive actioner with just the right amount of offbeat humor. It's the perfect movie to keep us awake overnight.

3:45 am - Cop Out (2010, dir. Kevin Smith)

I want to ease our way out of the overnight portion of our marathon with something stupid and easy and Cop Out fits the bill. Intended as Kevin Smith's audition into the world of bigger for-hire studio gigs, the movie wound up a critical disaster, a commercial bomb, and a miserable experience for almost everyone involved. Bruce Willis is openly unhappy as a veteran cop trying to recover a stolen baseball card to pay for his daughter's wedding, while Tracy Morgan works overtime trying to compensate as Willis' wacky partner. The main reason I want to include it in the marathon is because it's a buddy cop movie about being a buddy cop movie, which is to say Smith clearly has a ton of affection for the genre and leans into as many tropes as possible, down to getting Harold Faltermeyer to compose the score. I admire the effort even though it mostly doesn't work. I'm still glad we have this movie, though, because a) I don't hate it and b) without it, we wouldn't have gotten Smith's weirder, more experimental phase that yielded movies like Red State and Tusk.

5:45 am - Number One With a Bullet (1987, dir. Jack Smight)

I love this buddy cop movie from Cannon, even though I'm still not sure if it's playing it straight or intended to be a spoof of buddy cop movies. Robert Carradine seems miscast as Det. Nick Barzack (aka Ber-zerk), but that's part of the fun. Billy Dee Williams gets nothing to do but be cool, sleep with women, and play the jazz trumpet, like he just walked off the set of a Colt .45 commercial and no one told him he was shooting a movie. It seems to be a legitimate entry in the buddy cop genre, but then we'll get a shot of Carradine cutting up pieces of raw steak with his pocket knife for dinner and chasing it with swigs of Worcestershire sauce straight from the bottle and I'm convinced it's all supposed to be funny. Fun fact: the music for the movie is done by Alf Clausen, best known for scoring 25 years of The Simpsons. Even more fun fact: this movie has four credited writers, one of whom is K-9 star Jim Belushi, who for sure wrote the part of Barzack for himself.

7:30 am - Freebie and the Bean (1974, dir. Richard Rush)

Released the same year as Peter Hyams' Busting, Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean is one of the earliest examples of the buddy cop genre, codifying the next 50 years through ad-libbed dialogue and chemistry between stars Alan Arkin and James Caan that made the movie much funnier than originally scripted. As partners taking on organized crime, Caan and Arkin mostly insult one another and create havoc on the streets of San Franciso, but it's super fun and feels edgy in ways that haven't all dated well (Valerie Harper would most likely not be cast as Latina these days), but its lack of political correctness is a feature and not a bug. We have to program one of the originators of the genre in the marathon because here at FTM we respect our elders.

9:30 am - Bad Boys II (2003, dir. Michael Bay)

Shit just got real. We'll end as we began: with pure chaos. I can't think of a bigger, badder buddy cop movie, one that's practically gleeful in its hateful nihilism. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return as Miami's finest, this time taking down a drug dealer with the help of Lawrence's sister (played by Gabrielle Union), whom Smith is dating in secret. This is pure Bayhem: 360 degree shootouts, freeway chases, entire cities irresponsibly leveled by cops doing whatever the fuck they want. I love the idea of ending a 24-hour marathon on a movie this numbing in its scale and its ugliness. If we're gonna go down, let's go down guns blazing.