Cop Out

Cop Out - Dir. Kevin Smith (2010)


Bruce Willis is Jimmy Monroe and Tracy Morgan is Paul Hodges, a pair of NYPD detectives who have been partners for nine years. After botching a drug bust, Jimmy and Paul are suspended without pay by their angry precinct captain. Yes, he does force them to turn in their badges and guns, but we never hear anything about the mayor shitting bricks.

With his daughter, Ava (Michelle Trachtenberg), about to be wed, Jimmy needs cash to pay for the ceremony and hopes to cash in on a valuable baseball card. Just as he’s about to have it appraised, the shop is robbed and the card snatched up. Jimmy and Paul are able to catch one of the thieves, a motor-mouthed practitioner of parkour named Dave (Seann William Scott). From him, they learn the card is now in the possession of a wannabe kingpin known on the streets as Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz). This leads to a stolen Mercedes, a kidnapped woman (Ana de la Reguera) locked in the trunk, and Po Boy’s plot to take over the drug rackets on the entire east coast. Meanwhile, Paul is constantly worried that his wife, Debbie (Rashida Jones), is cheating on him.

Cop Out marks the first time Kevin Smith has directed a film not based on his own script. Smith is certainly an unlikely director-for-hire. His name certainly coming up due to getting along swimmingly with his fellow New Jerseyite on the set of Live Free or Die Hard. Smith, by his own admission, isn’t the most visual of directors. He and his long-time cinematographer David Klein have produced their slickest looking film to date, but the action is far too bland to excite.

The script (originally known under the far superior title of A Couple of Dicks) by Robb & Mark Cullen is a throwback to the Shane Black-style 80’s buddy cop flicks. Adding to the feel, the synth score for Cop Out is composed by Harold Faltermeyer of Beverly Hills Cop fame. But, the sad attempts at comedy here pale in comparison to films like the aforementioned Beverly Hills Cop as well as 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon. The movie strains under childish gags like Seann William Scott annoyingly repeating what other people say.

Bruce Willis essentially plays Bruce Willis here and that’s worked out well for him, but Tracy Morgan proves he’s not ready for a leading role. On 30 Rock, Morgan is hilarious in those short bursts. However, his Tracy Morgan shtick wears thin after an hour and forty minutes.

It’s said that every hero is only as good as his villain. If that’s the case, the heroes are incredibly weak considering their weak villains. Poh Boy and his gang are some of the least menacing and least memorable bad guys in recent memory.

Cop Out opens with Morgan interrogating a prisoner by quoting lines from random films like Jaws, Star Wars (it is a Smith film), Dirty Dancing, and even Die Hard. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, you never want to remind the audience of movies they’d rather be watching.

Rating: * ½

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker - Dir. Kathryn Bigelow (2009)


"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." – Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

American audiences have been reticent in rushing out to see movies depicting war and the current political climate. Not surprising, since they’ve more than gotten their fair share in the daily news. The majority of these films (Stop-Loss, Rendition) have fallen flat on their face. The Hurt Locker, a refreshingly apolitical take on the subject matter, is not one of them. It is a great deal things, a taut drama, a splendid action movie, and, perhaps, the best depiction of the Iraqi War to date.

Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and SPC Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are members of an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit deployed during the early stages of the invasion in 2004. Their team leader, SSgt. Thompson (Guy Pearce), is killed in the opening moments by an IED (improvised explosive device). He is replaced by SFC Will James (Jeremy Renner) who isn’t afraid to literally get his hands dirty when defusing explosive devices. He tosses aside his protective suit at one point proclaiming, ”If I’m gonna die, I want to die comfortable.” In the aftermath of a bombing, he rushes off into the night to go after the perpetrators.

His recklessness immediately puts him into conflict with his comrades. Sanborn is by-the-books and with a little over a month left in their tour of duty only wants to get home in one piece. Eldridge is traumatized following Thompson’s death and carries the guilt over not pulling the trigger on the insurgent detonating the bomb.

James is not the typical maladjusted combat veteran. Yes, he is more at home on the battlefield than he is shopping for breakfast cereal with his wife (Evangeline Lilly) and son. Yes, he is something of an adrenaline junkie. But, he’s not callous. He’s simply learned to deal with the life-or-death situations in an emotionally detached manner. James tugs on a wire to find it attached to seven other bombs buried in the sand. With clinical precision, he simply yanks the connecting wires loose. He keeps a box of mementos under his bed, matter-of-factly explaining they are pieces of the devices that have almost killed him. As James, Jeremy Renner gives a star-making performance. There is an eerie calmness to his man trying to stay sane in an insane world.

One of the few female directors working in the action genre, Kathryn Bigelow, has a better grip of the on-screen happenings than most of her overpaid mail counterparts. She has already helmed a trio of underrated films in Near Dark, Strange Days, and Point Break (yes, Point Break) and she’s finally receiving well-deserved accolades for Hurt Locker. The film was shot on location in Jordan and Kuwait with four 16mm cameras covering the production. There’s immediacy and a sustained tension underlying throughout the movie.

Is it a perfect film? Far from it, the screenplay by former embedded journalist Mark Boal drifts off tangent from time to time. The most jarring subplot involves James’ befriending of a local Iraqi boy selling bootleg DVDs. Real-life veterans have criticized the inaccuracies in combat scenarios. Criticisms aside, The Hurt Locker is still one of the best war movies made by Hollywood and easily one of the best pictures of 2009.

Rating: ***