COP OUT

 

 

Cop Out is a "cop buddy" movie directed by "independent" film director Kevin Smith (of Clerks and Chasing Amy fame) starring action flick stalwart Bruce Willis (of Die Hard fame) and Saturday Night Live alumnus Tracy Morgan. In the movie, Willis and Morgan play a couple of rather bumbling police officers who end up going after a gangster for stealing Bruce's character's rare baseball card that he wants to use to pay for his daughter's wedding. (Yes, ladies & gents, this is the "plot" of this particular flick!) This flick uses just about every "cop buddy" flick cliche imaginable as Willis is seemingly doing a parody of his celebrated John McClane Die Hard character and Morgan does his Saturday Night Live schtick he's been doing for years. This flick seemingly tries to have it both ways as it's both a "comedy" and an action flick. The action scenes are actually pretty good, in my oh-so-humble opinion, but the comedy aspect of it--again, in my oh-so-humble opinion--tends to fall rather flat. Critics of Kevin Smith's films have charged that his flicks can either be hit-or-miss, and, like a number of critics of this film have surmised, I'm sorely tempted to put it in the "miss" category. Personally, I think Smith did it primarily to make money (which it actually was a "minor" hit at the box office and was reportedly Smith's highest-grossing flick to date). Diehard (pardon the pun!) fans of Bruce Willis and/or Tracy Morgan might really enjoy this flick, though. Like they say, there's no accounting for taste! (That was me trying to be "comedic," by the way!) A sidenote: Kevin Smith has stated in various interviews, including one he did for Playboy (where he once photographed his naked wife being groped by Superman, by the way!), how he nearly came to blows with Bruce Willis on the set of Cop Out, which is really not so surprising considering Bruce's D-Bag reputation on the sets of his films. The original title, interestingly enough, was A Couple Of Dicks. Ironically, if they had kept THAT title, it would have been the funniest part of the whole damn movie!