48 Hrs.
(1982)
As big screen debuts go, Eddie Murphy’s must be the one to
beat. He arrives as a fully-formed star, and his performance as Reggie Hammond
is deceptively confident. As the passing decades have proved, success on SNL is no guarantee of a sure-thing
acting career. Murphy’s an instant natural, though. Yet he adopts a less
out-and-out comic persona than in Beverly
Hills Cop a couple of years later. He’s
able to fit seamlessly into Walter Hill’s supercharged cop action and isn’t at all
out of place trading insults with “proper” actor Nick Nolte. Could you imagine
Chevy Chase doing the same? It’s the banter, and unlikely chemistry, between
Murphy and Nolte that ensure 48 Hrs.
is still worth a look, but there's not much else to it.
Credit where it’s due, though. This film launched the whole
buddy cop movie cycle and established any number of careers, not just Murphy’s.
Walter Hill’s career was beginning to take off, but 48 Hrs. gave it a huge shot in the arm. Known for his eclectic
explorations of masculinity, his ‘70s filmography saw him working with Charles
Bronson before helming the little-seen existential crime thriller The Driver. Then he scored a minor hit
with The Warriors, a movie that would
quickly achieve enormous cult status. His follow-ups, western The Long Riders and the Deliverance-esque Southern Comfort, also did reasonable business. Post-48 Hrs. he attempted his boldest
experiment, the rather flaccid mythic rock action flick Streets of Fire, before losing his way completely with a remake of
the comedy Brewster’s Millions (a big
hit, however). Mostly he stuck to his male-centric action oeuvre, but his only
really big subsequent hit was the weak cash grab of Another 48 Hrs. in 1990.
Just a glance at the main production credits is a who’s who
of some of the main players of the next decade. Joel Silver’s first big film as
producer, he (and sometime co-producer Lawrence Gordon; 48 Hrs. was his idea) would quickly vault to the throne as reigning
monarch of Hollywood action movies (Simpson and Bruckheimer would ultimately
contest this claim). Co-writer Roger Spottiswoode was developing a hit-and-miss
directorial career (it would continue in this vein). Steven E. De Souza had
slogged it out in TV for the best part of the ‘70s; this was his big movie
break and he’d become a regular on Silver productions (most notably Die Hard). Composer James Horner was
beginning to make his mark also (this came out the same year as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).
But, for all the four screenplay credits (also Hill and
Larry Gross), the plot is paper-thin. Crazy James Remar breaks out of a chain
gang and, as any unfiltered psychopath does, gleefully blows away anyone who
hinders his quest for the loot from a drug deal gone wrong. Nolte’s cop Jack
Cates reluctantly releases Murphy’s con Reggie from prison for 48 hours, on the
understanding that the latter will help him find Remar.
The project had been around for several years, with Clint
Eastwood and Richard Pryor mooted. Other names included Mickey Rourke, Kris
Kristofferson, Jeff Bridges and Gregory Hines. When Murphy got the part he
pressed for a change of his character name “Willie Biggs” to something that was
less of a “Hollywood, made-up, black guy’s name”; he said the charge could
still be levelled at first name of the compromise, Reggie Hammond. Even when 48 Hrs. finally got off the ground, the
problems weren’t over. Paramount got very antsy that the film was too violent,
that Murphy wasn’t funny enough, etc.
Everything rests on the love-hate relationship between Nolte
and Murphy, and it more than scores in that department. There's an abundance of
eyebrow-raising casual racism from Cates, and bruisingly casual macho sexism
from everyone. The signature scene of Murphy in a redneck bar is still a lot of
fun (“I’m your worst fuckin’ nightmare, man. I’m a nigger with a badge…”),
but the script falls short as far as the cop stuff goes. There's certainly no
detective work, and if a cop movie is only as good as its villain then this
definitely isn't one of the all times greats. Remar’s (Dexter's dad, and in some circles still best known as the guy who played
Hicks for about a week in Aliens -
what a claim to fame) only motivation is to act mental.
In spite of the winning banter between the leads, perhaps the most fun is
to be had in playing "spot the supporting actor and the things they’ve gone on to do";
Breaking Bad's Jonathan Banks is in
there, who I suddenly retrospectively recognise with hair – he also appears in Gremlins. Favourite rent-a-thug Brion
James plays a cop. Predator's Sonny
Landham breaks out Remar. Twin Peaks
actors David Patrick Kelly and Chris Mulkey play a lowlife and a patrolman
respectively. Denise Crosby wields a baseball bat at Murphy in a pre-Star Trek: The Next Generation part.
Best of all is Frank McRae, who delivers more laughs than Murphy and Nolte
combined, as the latter’s splenetic captain. He would memorably riff on it in
Schwarzenegger’s meta-action vehicle Last
Action Hero.
Walter Hill ensures the action scenes are a big and sinewy,
but in a very mannered post-Peckinpah style. You could drive a fleet of trucks
through the spaces between the explosive gunfire, and Nolte's final takedown is
a pure Royale with Cheese moment.
The end result is equal cop movie cliché and witty banter;
Murphy and Nolte propel the piece now as surely as they did when it was first
released, but the steroidal bombast of the action has become rather quaint and
dated.
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