Posted on: July 24th, 2010 BD REVIEW: Cop Out
It’s so hard to watch Cop Out and not line up director Kevin Smith in the sights. The film is so painfully devoid of any real charm or interest or humor that someone must be accountable for it. And while Smith did not write the film – the first in his resume to wear that… badge? – Cop Out bares the eye-rolling, wince-inducing low-end guffaws we’ve become used to since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I don’t mean to trash the filmmakers entire career since 2001 (I loved Clerks 2 and enjoyed Zack and Miri Make a Porno) as I classify myself as a “Kevin Smith fan”. I’ve attended two of his Evening With Kevin Smith performances, and highly recommend his weekly podcast, Smodcast. But there’s an underlying groan in his recent films that has continued to fester until reaching amputation status with Cop Out – Kevin Smith is a comedy director who is simply neither funny nor apt behind a camera.
The film features the unlikely pairing (both in-front and behind the camera) of Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as nine-year partners in the NYPD. The pair get suspended for a public shoot-out ala Beverly Hills Cop – a film which Cop Out tries to pay homage too but ends up shoddily emulating – and Willis’s character , desperate for $48,000 to pay for his daughter’s wedding, tries to sell a high-valued baseball card. And then it gets stolen. From then on the film attempts to weave in a storyline (a term I use at its loosest) about a Mexican drug lord and a cheating wife, none of which I can articulate on further, as they may as well have been stuck on the screen with velcro. Nothing in this movie sticks.
Across the board, the performances in this film are of the lowest calibre possible. Tracy Morgan isn’t an actor. He’s very funny, yes, and he says lines in an unusual, sometimes chuckle-receiving way, but he simply cannot act, and Cop Out does have a few scenes that would require that. None of which he can pull off. A secondary story-line involves Morgan’s suspicions of his wife having an affair; a storyline rendered completely dull and uninteresting thanks to Morgan’s constant mugging and shouting. There’s a reason why I like Morgan in 30 Rock, and that is because he’s not really a character with intent or purpose. He’s just there to say a silly line or two, and in that case it works. It doesn’t work for a lead in a feature film, especially one where you’re meant to play a believable cop alongside Bruce Willis.
As for Bruno… well… with every second of screen time Bruce Willis has, you can see it in his eyes. That look that says “what the fuck am I doing? This is terrible. What was I thinking?”. Easily Willis’s worst performance to date. It’s hard watching Cop Out and thinking of how great Bruce is in films like Die Hard and Unbreakable. It’s also sad considering Willis is notorious for re-writing his own scenes, a privilege we can assume Smith granted him. I’d lean towards Bruce not giving a shit, as I find it hard to believe he put his touch on anything we see here.
At the end of the day, it’s unfortunate that the director must take the brunt of the heat when it comes to a bad movie. Every aspect of the film is near unwatchable from the performances to the script, even down to Harold Faltermeyer’s uninspired 80’s synth-score which is phoned-in and forgettable compared to his marks on cinema music with themes to Beverly Hills Cop and Fletch. But it’s also the director’s job to craft these elements and guide these artists to fit a vision, and sadly Smith made this film with a blindfold on.
Available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD, On Demand and for Download 7/20 http://bit.ly/CopOutfb