Buddy Cop Movie Bracket Game

https://lebeauleblog.com/2019/07/29/buddy-cop-movie-bracket-game/

This weekend, the Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw hits theaters starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. In a completely novel twist on the action genre, Johnson and Statham portray a couple of mismatched cops who have to team up to take down the bad guy played by Idris Elba. Yep, it’s a buddy cop movie. So let’s have a bracket game, shall we?

To be honest, I’m not all that excited about Hobbs & Shaw personally. The trailers do look like stupid fun, but I have never watched any of the previous Fast and Furious movies and I am unlikely to start now. So why do a buddy cop movie bracket game? I usually look to upcoming movie releases for inspiration and August just didn’t have a lot to offer in the way of bracket game subjects. So, here we are.

Buddy cop movies have been around for a while. Many point to 1967’s In the Heat of the Night as the start of the niche genre. They were popularized in the 1980’s with 48 Hours and the first two Lethal Weapon movies as genre-defining entries.

During the 80’s, a lot of these movies would play on racial themes with an interracial set of partners. This was especially true in 48 Hours in which Nick Nolte played an overtly racist cop who had to work with Eddie Murphy to solve a crime. Race was less of a factor in follow-up movies like Lethal Weapon and Running Scared which featured black-and-white partners.

The genre included a bizarre subgenre of canine buddy cops. Sometimes both cops would be black (Bad Boys) often times they would both be white (Stakeout, Tango & Cash), Rush Hour got rid of the white cop in favor of Jackie Chan and The Heat featured female buddy cops.

When the formula grew, stale it was reinvented with a meta spin. Twenty-first century buddy cop movies often winked at the genre with movies like Hot Fuzz, The Other Guys and 21 Jump Street.

For our bracket game, I picked 16 movies that I thought represented the range of buddy cop movies. In order to expand the field to 32 I was going to have to include a whole lot of unmemorable movies. While I think buddy cop movies are worthy of a bracket game, this seemed like a good one to shorten by a round.

The one movie that is missing from the list that I think some people might object to is Beverly Hills Cop. It’s a much better movie than a lot of the ones I included in the game, but to my mind it is not really a buddy cop movie. Sure, Eddie Murphy plays a cop and by the end he makes nice with the Beverly Hills officers. But for most of the movie, they are working at cross purposes. When they team up, it’s mostly because Murphy’s character tricks them.

Another choice that some may object to is the inclusion of Midnight Run. Technically, Robert DeNiro’s character is a bounty hunter rather than a cop. But occupation aside, the movie plays according to the buddy cop formula in every other respect. Midnight Run was director Martin Brest’s follow-up to Beverly Hills Cop, so at least he’s represented in the game.

Time to pick your favorite buddy cop movies before we all get too old for this shit.