Review: 'Cop Out' Starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan

Kevin Smith's involvement in this oddball buddy comedy has been the target of scrutiny from day one. The venerable director/writer behind such GenX fanboy favorites as Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma has never once directed a feature that he didn't write. He swore not to, and yet for reasons all his own he couldn't pass this up. I never understood why until now. Smith's fingerprints are all over Cop Out, making it as much a Kevin Smith film as if he had written it himself.

Think Beverly Hills Cop meets Die Hard with a Vengeance. Bruce Willis is hard nosed veteran cop, Jimmy Monroe. His longtime partner of nine years is Paul Hoges, played by 30 Rock's Tracy Morgan. Jimmy is a hard ass, dropped straight from the John McClane action school. Paul is a goofy, movie quote spouting fool. He plays at being a cop, taking his cues from the cop movies he loves so much. The two are almost total opposites, but there's a dangerous playful streak in them both. Like most cop partnerships, the two are very close even when off the job.

Due to Paul's idiotic mistakes...y'know, like beating up a kid in order to use his bike to chase down a suspect, the duo are suspended without pay. That's funny, in action movies cops steal people's vehicles all the time to run down criminals all the time!? Jimmy's daughter(Michele Trachtenberg) is about to get married. Jimmy's ex-wife and her current husband(Jason Lee) want to shell out for the $50,000 wedding. Jimmy's ego couldn't handle having another man pay for his daughter's nuptials, could it? So what does he do? He decides to sell his rare baseball card, worth $80,000 to pay for it himself. The only problem is: the card shop gets robbed by a pair of two bit criminals, one a wise cracking cat burglar(Sean William Scott). The baseball card? Gone. The mission? Get it back.

The search for the missing baseball card gets the duo involved in the schemes of an enterprising druglord(Guillermo Diaz) who coincidentally happens to be a baseball fan. If it sounds stupid, it's because it is. It's little more than an excuse to have Willis and Morgan riff off eachother for 90 minutes. And I'm perfectly okay with that.

Cop Out feels like it was ripped straight out of 1985. When not bangin' classic hip hop beats from The Beastie Boys or Erik B. and Rakim's Follow the Leader in a blistering chase sequence, smooth synthesized tunes that could've been taken from the 48 Hours soundtrack are in full effect. It's clear what Smith and company are shooting for, and that's to make a film that stands up to those buddy cop films that were such a hit years ago before they all turned to crap.

For the most part, Smith succeeds. While I'm a huge fan of Kevin Smith as a writer, his direction has always been my sticking point. He has a style that's undefined, and that stems from the fact that most of his films are "talkies". It's mostly people sitting around chatting about comic books and their hearts getting broken. Here he gets to stretch his action muscles just a little bit, even if those scenes are played mostly for comedic effect. I could've done with a bit more gunplay and violence(Axel Foley was in more danger!), but I think if there was we probably wouldn't have Smith as the director at all. It's simply not his strong suit.

The draw is obviously the pairing of Willis and Morgan. Willis slips comfortably in a role he can probably do in his sleep. Morgan was the real wild card. He's an actor I liked tremendously early on, but at some point he reached the point of being overbearing and unwatchable, sortof like how I feel about Jack Black. Here Morgan plays to his comedic strength: epic cluelessness. He plays Paul as an exaggerated version of the classic Kevin Smith man-child. He's not a moron, just completely unaware of his own actions. The biggest laughs come from Willis' facial expressions in reaction to Morgan.

The real surprise for me was Sean William Scott. Another actor I've soured on because he tends to play the some wise ass character in every film. Although he showed more depth than I thought in 2008's Role Models. Here he's pretty much back to typical form, but here it works mainly because he never has to be the film's comedic focus. He gets to play as a pestering irritant(he's sortof like how Joe Pesci was in Lethal Weapon) to both Paul and Jimmy. He steals practically every scene he's in, especially when dualing back and forth with Morgan.

Cop Out doesn't aspire to much, but it's certainly better than it lets on. It's not going to usher in a new era of great cop comedies or anything. It's a funny film. Not side splitting hilarious. Just funny enough. For Kevin Smith, I don't know if this will make him want to do more "for hire" work or not, but it does show the guy can branch out successfully. Now if only he could fit in an airplane seat.