COP: THE HARD WAY, ONE GOOD COP, RUSH
As long as there have been movies, there have been movies about cops, and for good reason. Though not limited to these themes, movies about cops have often explored not only how these cops enforce the law of this country, but what it means to do so. As the Hays Code was lifted, in the 60's and 70's you also often saw how cops could cross over and become against the law, and a few films even tried to question the whole system of cops. Among the many cop films of 1991 were John Badham's THE HARD WAY, Heywood Gould's ONE GOOD COP, and Lili Fini Zanuck's RUSH.
Of course, not all cop films have to be serious - one of the earlier staples of screen comedy was the bumbling Keystone Kops. Badham's film doesn't exactly make fun of cops, but it does poke fun at the "buddy" movie which cop movies often fall into. The result is nothing you haven't seen before, but it's hugely entertaining nonetheless.
Michael J. Fox stars as Nick Lang, an actor who's had a string of hits in INDIANA JONES-type movies, but who is longing to play something more serious ("I wanna play a grownup!" he yells at his agent Angie (Penny Marshall)). Lang sees his chance when he gets a cop script, and sees John Moss (James Woods), a rogue cop, on television. Moss has been on the trail of the Party Crasher (Stephen Lang), a serial killer, and after a failed pursuit of him lands on the news (where Lang saw him), Moss gets taken off the case. His new assignment? Help Lang get into character for two weeks.
Naturally, of course, this is the last thing Moss wants to do (one of the films best scenes is when Moss delivers a blistering monologue on how being a cop is real, not acting, and Lang pulls out his tape recorder and says, "That was great. Can you repeat that?"). Naturally, Lang gets pulled into the serial killer subplot. And naturally, since cop movies often portray cops as lonely people who can't relate to women, Moss is attracted to Susan (Annabella Sciorra), a divorcee, but can't tell her he loves her. So naturally, Lang coaches him in a bar by pretending to talk like a woman.
There are plenty of movies out there where you can poke holes through them and still enjoy them, and this is a good example. Badham and writers Lem Dobbs and Daniel Pyne do go overboard on the action stuff (though the climax over a billboard on Times Square is a nice homage to NORTH BY NORTHWEST). Lang does go overboard in his performance. And to say the movie plays fast and loose with NYC geography is putting it mildly (Moss manages to go across town just by walking across a subway platform). Finally, of course, this is all predictable. But it's still a lot of fun, not only because the movie has fun with the relationship between cops and movies (Moss tells his boss (Delroy Lindo) about Lang's behavior early on, and Lindo promises to speak to Lang about it; of course, his first words are, "I'm a big fan"), but because of the performances.
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