Cop Out

Because I have nothing but admiration and respect for Kevin Smith, I really wanted to like Cop Out. As a critic, I'm not supposed to admit those things, but when it's regarding someone I'm as big of a fan boy over as I am over Smith and his movies, I might as well be up front about it. There aren't many directors that did more to push independent film back towards mainstream public consciousness as Smith did in the early 1990's. Films like The Hurt Locker can owe a lot of their success to guys like Smith and Quentin Tarantino paving the way. So while I wanted to like Cop Out, I had a bad feeling about it from the start. This isn't an independent film. This is a Warner Bros. backed project, meaning there's going to be more of a mainstream sheen to it right from the start. And this isn't a script that Smith himself wrote. If you're a fan of Smith's work, it's likely due much more to his writing style than his cinematography. Take out what makes a Kevin Smith film successful? Well, at the very least, it's uncharted territory. This is the first film he's directed that he didn't also write. Hopefully, it's his last as well.

Cop Out tells the story of Jimmy (Bruce Willis) and Paul (Tracy Morgan), two cops that the movie wants us to believe have been partners for a decade and best friends away from work as well. It starts out with probably the movie's sole laugh out loud moment as Paul interrogates a suspected drug runner using bits and pieces of techniques from every other cop movie you can think of as Jimmy looks on bemused. Hell, having Bruce Willis draw a sex organ on the two way mirror looking into the interrogation room is probably the highlight of the movie, as a "I can't believe they got him to do that," moment. The drug runner reveals that he's supposed to pick up a shipment from his store later that afternoon, which leads to Jimmy and Paul staking out the store as the drug runner plays along. The whole thing gets bungled, and we end up with the two getting suspended in a scene you've seen in every single buddy cop movie every made. This leaves Jimmy unable to pay for his daughter's wedding, and rather than allowing his daughter's stepfather (Jason Lee) pay for the wedding, Jimmy decides to sell his rare baseball card to fund the event. That goes wrong as well as a thief (Seann William Scott) robs the store as Jimmy is about to sell the card, leading to the card falling into the hands of a drug lord with a baseball fetish (Guillermo Diaz). Jimmy and Paul end up having to work for the drug lord in order to try to earn back the card, but end up stumbling upon a woman (Ana de la Reguera) that the drug lord (named Poh Boy for no particular reason) wants dead. The two cops have to make a decision between getting the card back and saving the girl.

If that doesn't come across as completely convenient and convoluted then perhaps I'm not explaining it well enough. That may be. My head got more and more numb as the whole thing played out. Part of the problem for me was that the characters seemed to be caricatures without any depth whatsoever. Diaz' Poh Boy was a pretty stock goofy yet ruthless Latino drug lord. Seann William Scott played a slightly sillier version of the same character he's been playing for a while now. I'm now absolutely convinced that Tracy Morgan doesn't act so much as he just plays himself with ever so subtle variations. And Bruce Willis even made sure to bring along his John McClane, though with just enough of a comedic touch and less of an edge to make it seem different enough to get by. People are going through the motions on screen. It's not so much painful to watch as it is disappointing. Smith is meticulous about getting exactly what he wants out of his actors. I hope this wasn't it.

Perhaps more disappointing than anything else in this movie was the lack of chemistry between Willis and Morgan. No, I don't believe for a second that these two cops are friends. I don't believe these two characters are cops, but beyond that, I don't believe that they'd say hello in the hallway, let alone be partners and friends. Yes, I understand that the tension there is the basis of every successful buddy-cop movie from the 1980's, and that this movie is an homage to those movies. The problem is that there isn't any tension here. It's just flat out not believable. The movie didn't invest me enough in the main characters. It didn't even really get me to believe that these characters were characters at all. Sure, their names were Jimmy and Paul. But the entire time, I saw Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, and never a hint of those characters. You can't build a buddy-cop movie if you can't convince me that those two people are friends, even if they're just friends because of the situation. And you certainly can't pull it off if you can't convince me that those characters are cops. Or exist at all.

I want to give Smith credit for stepping out of his comfort level and taking on a script that he didn't write. I can see why he took it, too. There are hints of his comedic touch in that script, and occasionally they leak out long enough to cause a chuckle. But what's missing here is the humanity in the characters and in the script that make Kevin Smith movies, and buddy-cop movies in general, tick. If this is what the result is going to be when Smith directs a movie that he didn't write, then I must implore him to reconsider that decision in the future.