Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone take a run-of-the-mill movie and turn it into something quite entertaining. The action scenes in the movie are quite good, and it has a young Teri Hatcher — which catapults this movie into the “win” column for me.
Eddie Murphy spent this movie perfecting his wise-cracking cop personae he would later use in Beverly Hills Cop, though here he's playing a criminal working with the police. 48 Hours worked because of the teaming of Murphy with tough-guy Nick Nolte in a movie that set the formula for many similar flicks to come.
Tom Hanks does great comedy, but he also nails the cop drama in this buddy cop movie with a twist — one of the cops is a dog. Hey, don’t tell me you don’t think it’s great when Turner and Hooch share a beer.
Based on the classic TV series, Dragnet paired Dan Aykroyd’s hyper-anal Sgt. Joe Friday with the Tom Hanks relaxed, slackerish Pep Streebeck (making this Hanks second appearance in a row on my list). This hilarious movie was underrated at the time of its release, but has done nothing but solidified the reps of both Aykroyd and and Hanks as very funny guys.
That’s right, I chose the sequel. This movie balanced the buddy cop formula with some great action scenes, and the chemistry between Martin Lawrence and Will Smith is great. Bad Boys II is always entertaining, even when they start invading Cuba.
This is a silly-but-fun version of the buddy cop formula, pairing Jackie Chan — known for his martial arts mastery — with Chris Tucker, known for … well, his big mouth. This movie did everything right and turned out to be more entertaining than I expected.
Despite fostering several awful sequels, Beverly Hills Cop is still about as iconic an ‘80s movie as you’ll find. Eddie Murphy is perfect as the street savvy Detroit cop Axel Foley, stuck fish-outta-water style in Beverly Hills with a pair of by-the-book cops.
This is one of the few modern buddy cop movies and it’s one of the best. Simon Pegg stars as Nicholas Angel, a dominant inspector put into a small town because he makes all the other cops look bad. Pegg is teamed up with his Shaun of the Dead co-star Nick Frost, who plays the innocent Danny. As the two come together some serious action occurs, along with some great comedy. (Still the best part: When Pegg drop-kicks the old lady).
Number one on my list follows the exploits of too-old-for-this-shit Detective Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and his new suicidal and completely unpredictable partner, Detective Riggs (Mel Gibson). One is planning on retiring, and the other wants to blow his brains out — but between all the bickering they manage to stop some huge drug ring lead by Gary Busey. Go figure!
Since Cop Out comes out this week and it looks pretty good, I started thinking about some of the movies it will eventually get compared to. No, I’m not talking about just comedies or Kevin Smith movies — I’m talking Buddy Cop Movies. You know the kind, where two cops with very different personalities work together to solve a case, and in doing so become good friends. I know what you’re thinking: It’s been done before. You're right! With that in mind, I compiled a list of my favorites.
Note: This is a list of my favorites and is far from definitive. I miss some of your favorites? Let me know in the comments!
Say what you want about this movie, based on the classic TV show, but they got the buddy cop formula right with the casting of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Granted, that's about all they got right, but every list of buddy cop movies has to start somewhere.
