Kevin Smith, who has written and directed movies like Clerks 1 and 2, Zack and Miri make a porno, Dogma and his various “An evening with Kevin Smith” DVDs, has now directed Cop Out. The thing that is special about this movie is that it’s the first movie where he did not write the story himself. Is this a movie which you can not miss or is it a movie only for the Kevin Smith fans?
The reason why you normally watch one of his films, is that you know what to expect. These are: strange characters, jokes about extreme things and a couple actors that will probably play in the movie like Jason Mewes or Ben Affleck. With this movie Smith leaves all of that behind.
Cop out would originally be titled “A couple of dicks”. Because this title could lead to some controversy (which he also had with Zack and Miri make a porno) the title was changed because of pressure from the movie company.
The movie stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as two cops. There is a total lack of chemistry between Willis and Morgan. In my opinion this is very important in these type of movies, just think of the Lethal Weapon series. Bruce Willis is easily replaceble by any other actor, because he really has no significant role in this movie. Tracy Morgan is responsible for the jokes and he does not always succeed unfortunately.
I noticed that the music that was used did not fit the movie at all. Most of it seemed to be composed in the eighties. Now if the movie was set around this time i would not mind, but this is not the case.
In my opinion the music that is used in a movie should either be there without you noticing it (for example to heighten the tension in a scene) or when you do notice it, it’s used to make you feel a certain way. In this movie it just was very annoying. Maybe that Smith wanted to use it as a tribute to the eighties cop buddy movies, but to me it wasn’t. It would have been better to not use it and just make a good movie.
The movie has a very weak story. It’s almost seems like an accident that these two have a gun and a badge, as you hardly see them do any proper police work. They could have been two cleaners. The only things they are doing for most of the movie are related to their own agenda. They don’t seem to care about killing or other people.
Two smaller parts of the story about Morgan’s wife and about Willis’ daughter are completely unnecessary and are such a small part of the movie that they could have been left out. The movie has a running time of 107 minutes, which is way too long en the movie was badly edited. Avoid this movie, as it’s a waste of time, even when you are a Kevin Smith fan.
If you want to see a good action comedy starring Bruce Willis, then i suggest you watch 1991’s The Last Boy Scout. It’s a lot better and a lot more fun.
Score: 4
I think you are wrong about the music, but right on many other points. I may have been a tad generous with a 7, and may have to knock a point off. Having seen all of Smiths films multiple times, will be interesting to see if this holds up to a repeat viewing.
Well, it’s something that really is subjective of course. I must admit i did like the rap songs that were used and those didn’t distract me…