Weekly Cinemeh

Hello and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh. This week our theme was cop movies. We had a lot to choose from this week so we picked some classics. Cop movies are odd because in most of them the main characters are cheered on for doing their jobs poorly, but because they are doing it for justice we are cool with it. Anyways, it was a fun week, To the list!

1: Serpico
Serpico is about a cop who is the only person who wants to follow the law, breaking with what I said in my intro. One of the cool/terrifying things about this movie is that it is based on an actual policeman who revealed the massive police corruption in the NYPD. The movie starts with Serpico getting shot and immediately goes into a flashback of his career as a cop, from beat cop to plainclothes. Serpico is a good officer with one flaw, he is the only clean cop on the force. Serpico then starts trying to clean up the force by working with some state investigators while also trying to not get killed by other cops who don't trust him because he isn't dirty like them. Al Pacino is the standout talent in this film as a policeman on the edge, not just because he wants justice to prevail, but because he doesn't want to get killed doing it (though the rest of the cast is competent). This is one of the better biography movies I have seen because it isn't only an entertaining movie but also has a good message that still needs to be addressed. The direction is solid, and the movie is great at building tension. Its a good movie, watch it.

Eshi: I have a hard time buying Pacino as a cop, and the fact that Serpico is the least stereotypical cop possible doesn't really help. He just always looks a little surprised and bewildered by the world around him to me. Fortunately, that kinda helps in this role, as Serpico is constantly being threatened and harangued for what really ought to be normal behavior for a cop. Really, Serpico is a pretty bad ass film about a pretty nifty dude, hampered only by the fact that old movies all seem to have a very flat tone to me. I think its a lighting thing. Anyway, if you wanna spend a couple hours just fucking loathing New York this is a great choice.

2: The French Connection
This is another movie that has a basis in reality, though its far more fictionalized than Serpico. This is a movie about a cop on the edge and his partner who is slightly less on the edge going after a drug ring that is starting to move on a big deal. Gene Hackman has always been good at playing a slightly angry tough guy, and this movie shows that off quite well. In this case the bad guy's attempt to kill him drives him to be perhaps a bit overzealous, and his quest for revenge makes him less of a cop and more of a vigilante. I am also a fan of Roy Scheider who plays the less aggressive partner to Gene Hackman's character. The two have good chemistry and its fun watching them run around being cops. There is an unfortunate side effect of watching this movie almost 50 years after it was released: it doesn't seem quite as fresh as it did back then. TFC came out in 1971 and for back then the car chase scene was very new and this one in particular was spectacular, but thanks to movies like the Bourne trilogy and a variety of others, chase scenes have transcended what they used to be. This is unfortunate, because the big chase is still good, and is shot well, it just seems a little less unique than it should. Don't take that statement as a negative, the movie is good, and you should still watch it, I just wish I had seen it earlier.

Eshi: Soooo, Gene Hackman's character looses his shit in this movie. Brian kinda points it out, but really man, dude murder's a fellow cop straight up. And he gives no fucks, just keeps on about his murder-business. I don't even feel bad about spoiling that, the movie is from '71 and I mean... Jesus. Like a full cylinder into the dude. That said, there are some nice buddy cop moments and and watching Hackman get dragged around New York by a fancy Frenchman is a lot of fun. Still has that old movie slog that came up with Serpico but its still definitely forgivable. Give it a try sometime.

3: Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills cop is a movie about a cop from Detroit going to Beverly Hills to solve the murder of his friend. This was one of my favorite cop movies when I was a teenager. When I saw it, I saw the TV cut which has about 50 less fucks, but that doesn't cut enough of the movie out to ruin it or anything. It was older than I was at the time and it was my first experience with Eddie Murphy as not a shitty kids movie comedian. Eddie Murphy's charisma and joking attitude made the story a little less harrowing for 15 year old me and seeing it again after a few years made me realize what a great movie it is to get a person into crime dramas. It still has a gritty story about a cop hunting the people who gunned down his best friend but does so not by killing a bunch of goons, but instead by using his wits to turn situations to his favor. Eddie Murphy is great in a complex role (you can tell he wants to kill the bad guy, but that he knows he can't because he is a cop) and his two cop sidekicks/babysitters are also fun to watch, particularly Judge Reinhold. Its a good movie that deserves a watch, even if it is a little dated (especially the music).

Eshi: I really dislike what Eddie Murphy has become, and Beverly Hills Cop is fucking why. In it; he's funny, charming, relatively intelligent, and engaging as a protagonist. Yet for, I don't know, twenty years or so, the man has just been a fucking chore to watch. Happily; this is not that, and BHC is delightful. Watching Murphy drag a bunch of straight-faced grumpy fucks around L.A. as a social character is grand. Its especially pleasant in our current climate of general police cuntitude. I just hope Eddie Murphy gets his shit together, 'cause he's been really bad for a long time and this proves that, at least once upon a time, he can do better.