oh man common's part was so cool, at least up until the shooting started and then his character started acting like a pussy, but still. i wanna see common play a bad guy again but have more screen time. serious!!
Keanu used it as the reason he didn't call for backup when he approached the house in the beginning of the movie. He said that he heard shots fired inside the house and he suspected there was an immediate threat to the victims' lives or something of that nature.
Correct. It is a legal term used by police officers that explains why they take action without a warrant (an emergency or other urgent condition exists)
So was the "exigent circumstances" line some sort of code meaning 'we are really undercover cops, we're on the same side'? Or was it just something Common said that sounded cool?
________________________________________ What happened happened and can't happen any other way
Ok now that other folks have told you what exigent circumstances are lemme tell you a little more about what happened there. It wasn't Keanu who figured it out first, it was Chris Evans. He recognized them as the undercover cops. Keanu just got the info from their dead bodies.
I thought Keanu only figured it out when he saw the story on the news. It was then that he understood the "exigent" remark made by the undercover cops.
What info did he gather from their dead bodies? I must've missed something in that part.
Chris Evans character was a rookie cop or at least inexperienced on the street or with violence, he never should have been there, but Ludlow knew he needed backup and in a way Evans at least died for a good cause.
As old as this thread is.. I think everyone sort of missed answering this properly. At the end we hear Reeves whisper to himself "exigent circumstances" after he finds out on the news that they two guys he killed were undercover. I think what we're supposed to understand is that he's just realizing that those words should have clued him in to them being cops since no one says that in everyday language. Those words came to that guys mouth because it's a term he uses more commonly than the average individual.
it is a line Reeves used at the beginning of the film to get him off the hook for murdering the Korean gang. Common and the other undercover cop obviously knew of this event and thus spoke the line.