Weekend Buff: 48 Hours
The single best cop buddy movie
In reading though my newsfeed this week I caught a headline that made me laugh out loud:
It seemed like a jest from the Babylon Bee and I laughed out loud. Almost immediately I realized that the Babylon Bee should not be in my newsfeed and discovered that it was a REAL article from the Washington Monthly magazine.
I laughed again. Two laughs for the price of one. Apparently, over the course of 48 hours, Joe Biden’s expert foreign policy and quick thinking saved the world in the nick of time.
After recovering from the dizzying mix of emotions that The Washington Monthly elicited, I thought of 48 Hours with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. A perfect candidate for this installment of Weekend Buff. I wanted to keep the laughs going and haven’t seen that movie in a long time. The news is depressing these days – we could all use a comedic break.
48 Hours was the prototype for the modern buddy cop comedy; two unlikely characters teaming up to solve the big one. Nick Nolte was already established as an actor; Eddie Murphy, fresh off Saturday Night Live, had never been in a movie. They teamed up for some comedy gold and great action.
Nolte stars as rough-around-the-edges San Francisco PD Inspector Jack Cates. He is hunting an escaped convict who just killed two cops. Eddie Murphy is career criminal Reggie Hammond. Hammond is doing time for armed robbery but has info that can help capture the cop killers.
After an administrative leap into fantasyland, Hammond is cut loose from prison for a 48-hour pass to nab the murderers. The duo canvass San Francisco in Cates’ baby blue ’63 Cadillac DeVille convertible, fighting crime and fighting each other.
Cates stirs up trouble wherever he goes and is abrasive and uncouth. He breaks every rule and is perennially promising to get some typing done (that sounds all too familiar). Hammond is enjoying his brief glimpse of freedom and twisting Cates.
Director Walter Hill takes a serious story that starts with cops being killed and makes it into a multi-faceted movie. 48 Hours keeps Cates and Hammond on-mission but gets some great comedy in without minimizing the gravity of the plot. A fine line, and Hill toes it perfectly with some big help from Murphy, who was widely hailed as the funniest man alive at the time (this was before Joe Biden became President, recall).
48 Hours deserves its status as a classic. It opened a new genre for cop movies, with films like Running Scared, Rush Hour, The Other Guys, and Lethal Weapon all borrowing a lot from its basic formula. It’s a template you still see regularly attempted in Hollywood, and with good reason: this movie is just extremely watchable and great fun. I’m not sure any of the imitators comes near it.
48 Hours runs about 90 minutes and is packed with shootouts, fistfights, pursuits, and laughs. You can find it for free on Amazon Prime and for a few bucks on the other usual outlets.
Take a break from the news cycle and return to a time when Hollywood seemed capable of making a movie that isn’t larded with woke messaging or CGI monsters. Instead, lighten up and enjoy an innovative, classic, comedy-action film. You know, one with wit and style.
It’s the funniest 48 hours since Joe Biden saved civilization.
