Vaya par de polis

Kevin Smith is one of my favorite modern filmmakers, but everyone makes mistakes and Smith's latest is COP OUT. I really wanted to enjoy this movie. Unfortunately, the movie was so mediocre that I found my attention wandering through most of it. The film, Smith's attempt at recreating the fun of 80's buddy cop films, stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as two disgraced cops who are suspended after a botched stake-out. The timing couldn't be worse, as Jimmy (Willis) is trying to pay for his daughter's wedding. He decides to sell off a rare baseball card to raise the funds, but a robbery relieves him of the card before he can. Jimmy and his long-time partner Paul (Morgan) set out to track down the baseball card and find themselves in the middle of a case to bring down a local drug lord who hopes to expand his business.

See, it even sounds like an 80s buddy cop movie!! The problem here is that the film isn't funny enough to be a full comedy, and the action isn't strong enough to be a decent action film. So it just sits in the middle, failing to appease people who watched it for either reason. Smith has created some of my favorite comedies (DOGMA was awesome, and JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is one of my guilty pleasures), but those were films he'd written and directed. Here, the writing duties had been given to Robb and Mark Cullen. I've never seen anything written by the Cullens and, thanks to COP OUT, I'm not in any real rush to do so. Smith's trademark borderline-juvenile comedy that usually has me laughing so hard I can't breathe is pretty much gone (though he does manage to toss in his obligatory STAR WARS reference) and replaced by cringe-worthy low(er) brow toilet humor.

The problem isn't just with the writing and weak action sequences, it's with the casting. I love Willis but he doesn't really seem to get much to work with, and for most of the movie he comes off as bored. Morgan was all right back in the day on SNL and he's pretty good on 30 ROCK, but he grinds on my nerves here. He has a few funny moments, but you need more than a few when you're helping carry an entire feature. The worst bit of casting came in the form of Guillermo Diaz as Poh Boy, the drug lord villain. Maybe it's because I can only remember him as Scarface from HALF-BAKED but I couldn't take any of his bad guy schtick seriously. Sean William Scott has the only real funny role in the movie as the S**t Bandit (so named because the cops spy him using the bathroom in the middle of a burglary). Scott earns the most laughs with his eccentric, childish games eating away at Paul's nerves.

I don't consider COP OUT a bad movie, because it's not so terribly done that I can't watch it. It has a couple fun moments but they're not enough to save the movie. The film never rises above mediocre and I hope this serves as a lesson to Smith that he should continue to write his own movies. I'm sure if he had put this together himself, it would've been light years better and we'd be applauding Smith for trying a new genre instead of wishing he hadn't.

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")

'Cop Out' is perhaps Kevin Smith's most 'un-Kevin Smith' film. It lacks the brand of humour his previous works had. Even though he has made his share of bad films next to a few great ones, the jokes usually work. In 'Cop Out' most of them fall flat. The story (if there is one) has no direction at all. The characters are annoying. Supporting characters appear and disappear randomly. In Smith's defence, he wasn't part of the writing department (though he was involved in the editing) and the script is just one big mess. I still wonder why he decided to make this? Even the actors seem to lack interest. Tracy Morgan is completely miscast and he has no chemistry with any of his costars. Actually none of the actors have chemistry. Bruce Willis too is unimpressive. Perhaps he's finally tired of playing the same kind of role over and over again. The title is somewhat right for the movie although I don't think it ever had potential.

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.

This movie was alright, but it failed to become something spectacular and memorable.

First of all, I am going to comment on the cast and the acting. As for Bruce Willis, well his acting is great, as usual, and he was good for this role. Now, for me, what really carried this movie was the character that Seann William Scott played, it was hilarious, even though it was just a supporting role. He was so cool in this role and I loved every moment of it. Now, on to Tracy Morgan, well I have to say that I found him amazingly annoying in this role, and I just wanted to reach in there and .... oh well, never the less, I think a guy like Chris Rock or Chris Tucker might have been better for this particular role.

Moving on to the story. Well, the plot and story was good, and constantly moving, so you weren't really bored at any point in the movie. And there were lots of hilarious scenes and moments as well. And there were also just enough twists and turns in the story to make it interesting.

The music in this movie sort of made me feel like I was watching a re-make of the old Eddie Murphy movies "Beverly Hills Cop". At times it was like the music was a remix or a homage to the music from those movies. That was kind of a bit too much for me.

I hadn't actually heard anything about this movie, prior to picking it up for the first time. But of course, by that way I had no expectations to the movie, which I think worked well in favor of the movie. The movie does provide good entertainment, but there isn't much in it that you haven't already seen in other movies. And for me, personally, this is not the type of movie that I would watch a second time around.