Cop Out

Kevin Smith, a man who was recently judged by Southwest Airlines to be too fat to fly, is easily recognizable as ‘Silent Bob’. Director and writer behind such films as Dogma, Clerks and Zack and Miri Make a Porno; with Warner Brothers’ film Cop Out, he is just the director, leaving the Cullen (no, not the Cohen) Brothers to do the writing. A buddy cop film, there has been every conceivable variant on the sub-genre, including every possible nationality, race and sexuality, and some films even trying species other than man (Turner and Hooch, Alien Nation). Of course Hollywood has never tried a woman as one of the cops because that would be far too original (DI Ripley & Snipes anyone?). Anyway here we see Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan go around killing a load of Mexicans in the search of an $80,000 baseball card.

Detective Jimmy Munroe (Bruce Willis) needs to sell his father’s uber-rare baseball card in order to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Failing to do this will mean her wealthy father-in-law will instead pay for it, which apparently is a tragedy for some reason – some kind of threat to his manly honour perhaps? It is never really explained. Well Munroe and his partner Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) have been recently suspended after they screwed up on a drug sting. And no, by ‘partner’ I do not mean they are lovers – heaven forbid anything as interesting as that happened in this movie. Anyway some bloke called Dave (Sean William Scott) steals the valuable card and so now the suspended duo must spend their free time hunting it down. Wait, do they also run into the Mexican gangbangers who they were stalking out in the failed drug bust? Why yes they do! Basically what From Paris With Love did for Sino-American relations, Cop Out does for Latin-American relations.

Is it funny? No. Could a four year old have written the script? Possibly. Are the two leads putting in half-assed performances? Seems that way. Do all of these flaws really matter though? Of course they do! What a stupid question. As a comedy there isn’t much to say about it, in this case that’s probably a good thing. Morgan and Willis have no chemistry between them at all. It is definitely one of those movies where the trailer looks fantastic, but once you have paid your money you are stuck watching a film that goes nowhere quickly. The writing is just stale; it goes from one gag to another, most of them failing. It’s the day after watching the film and I am struggling to think back to some of the ‘funny’ moments. The good trailer just makes you hate it even more. It makes you feel as though you have been deceived. People say Kevin Smith is a great guy and his films are hilarious. I never could understand why that is personally, but even Kevin Smith fans are distancing themselves from this trash.

The action scenes and the plot are horrid. There are about twenty Mexicans here, all of them are villains, all of them get shot, and nobody cares. It’s a rather worrying trend in the picture, but seen as no care went into any part of the film then why should the film care about dead characters? The plot is frustratingly awful, it is hard to believe the script was written by a professional writer.

With all its flaws there are some shining moments that are not included in the trailer. Sean William Scott always lifts the movie when he comes onto the screen. A real scene stealer, the character is likeable and gives the movie some desperately needed energy.

Overall a really poor effort, laughs are rare even if there are a number of chuckle-worthy moments. It is not funny enough for a comedy, and does not have a lot going for it at all. Avoid this one.