48 Hours

By 1982, Eddie Murphy had become the biggest, most popular member of the Saturday Night Live cast, bringing the show out of its first slump after the original cast had all left.  He was riding high and in the 1980s would make classic 1980s flicks like Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, Coming to America, and Trading Places.  I always think of BHC cop as his star-making movie turn, but his first movie role came in 1982's 48 Hrs.

With this 80s comedy, we revisit one of my favorite genres of movies, the buddy cop movie.  It can be difficult looking back on these without thinking 'Been there, seen that' because in the years since, the buddy cop movie has been used to death. The 1980s seemingly had one released every week or so.  At the time though, they were original and hadn't been overused repeatedly.  The setting? San Francisco, always a good start for a cop movie. The director? Tough guy master Walter Hill. The cop pairing? Comedian and funnyman Murphy with gravelly-voiced Nick Nolte. The story and driving force is criminally simplistic, relying on its stars and their chemistry (of which they have plenty) to carry the movie.

Tagging along on a routine credit card fraud questioning, San Francisco detective Jack Cates (Nolte) is the lone survivor of a shootout when the investigation proves to be much more.  The suspects are Ganz (James Remar), an escaped convict, and Billy Bear (Sonny Landham), his former partner who busted him out. Cates comes under fire for his actions and wants to get revenge in bringing these two cop-killers to justice. He figures Ganz and Billy are looking for something in the city, and comes up with a way to figure it out. One of their old partners, a former accomplice, Reggie Hammond (Murphy), is in prison locally with six months to go on a 3-year sentence. Cates convinces Reggie to help him but with one catch; he has to have him back at lock-up within 48 hours.

Like any buddy movie, the key is the chemistry of said buddies. Newman and Redford, Gibson and Glover, any number of flicks.  Murphy and Nolte are great together, the complete polar opposites working together.  Murphy's Reggie Hammond is the fast-talking crook who agrees to help Cates, but basically he just wants to get laid and make sure his hidden away stash is in fact, hidden away.  Nolte's Jack Cates is the stereotypical grizzled, worn down cop with problems at home while constantly fighting with his girlfriend (Annette O'Toole). The nature of the relationship is that they will fight, clash, feel each other out, and end up bonding, forming some sort of genuine working/personal friendly relationship.  Follow the formula and let the actors do the rest, and you've got a winner.

The humor from the movie comes from the interactions between Murphy and Nolte.  The story itself is dark and violent, following their investigation throughout San Fran in hopes of catching the two killers.  Hill co-wrote the script with three other credited writers has some great one-liners (read IMDB's Memorable Quotes HERE) and some memorable set-pieces.  The opening hotel shootout is choreographed nicely, and Murphy's posing as a detective in a very white, very redneck bar (in San Francisco?) is priceless.  What I enjoyed most though was the banter between the stars, Murphy pushing and pulling and prodding his detective handler while Nolte growls and mutters through his lines.

Starting directing in 1975 with Hard Times, Walter Hill has carved out a great little niche for himself, especially in the 70s and 80s.  He has a reputation for hard-hitting, tough movies that don't pull any punches. Think a more manageable, not so crazy Sam Peckinpah.  Because of Hill's taut directing (and a fair share of blood squibs), the movie never really slows down. It clocks in at 96 minutes and never stays in one place too long. Setting a cop story in the home of Bullitt and Dirty Harry is never a bad idea mostly because San Francisco is just a cool place to base a story. Throw away the humor and the chemistry, and what you've got here is a police procedural.  Nothing flashy, no bigger schemes at play, just a cop and a convict in his charge trying to get their hands on two cop killers.

Groundbreaking it is not, but Murphy and Nolte look to be having a lot of fun together, and a Walter Hill-directed movie is rarely a bad thing.  Solid and entertaining with the right mix of action, humor and a never-ending stream of talk about sex.  How can you go wrong?  It also produced a sequel some years later, review to come at some point.

48 Hrs. <---trailer (1982): ***/****