48 Hrs. (1982)

48 Hrs. (1982)

7/10

Starring

Nick Nolte

Eddie Murphy

Directed by Walter Hill

48 Hrs. is about a cop and a convict and it is tagged as the first action comedy buddy cop movie in the genre. The movie skips the regular buddy cop theme we have come to know, where one is a rule breaker and the other a rule keeper. Here the cop is a rule breaker and the convict is a convict of the bad kind.

This action comedy starts off with enough gun blazing from the first five minutes in and keeps the action going for the next twenty minutes.

The movie title is based on the time the two must solve the crime before Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) gets busted for his phony 48 Hrs. leave he got Reggie (Eddie Murphy) for.

The case that paired the two starts when a killer Ganz bust out of prison during prison duty with the aid of a friend as they staged a fight which led to the death of two cops.

While free the two decided to get even with some of the people they worked with, which also led to the death of two more cops. This last incident happened while Cates was waiting downstairs in a hotel for the two cops to come down, when Ganz and his man took down the Cates police cop buddies.

Cates with the help of Reggie who knows a lot about Ganz and his crew start to hunt down Ganz with the aim of bringing them to justice for their crime.

What I liked best about the movie is the even balance between the comedy and the action, which is similar to what you see in Lethal Weapon. The action keeps moving none stop and the comedy happens in between either by some odd happenings on screen or the lines of the actors.

The popular line, “I'm your worst fucking nightmare, man! A nigger with a badge.”

The similarities between Lethal Weapon and this movie is due to the movie producer Joel Silver, who also produced the Lethal Weapon movie series. This was Joel first producer credit and Eddie Murphy’s first movie credit.

The movie was a critical acclaim which was mostly due to the chemistry between both the leads and the characterization of Cates. The movie was also a box office success which led to the producers making a second part, Another 48 Hrs. This sequel could be seen as a financial success in the box office and Eddie Murphy was paid 60 times more for the sequel with also a share of the profits. The sequel was a critically panned and the studio called it a box office bomb, as it cost more to make and made only three times its production cost.