Detective Sergeant Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) isn’t a man you want to mess with, he takes his job extremely seriously and always likes to get his guy whatever the costs may be. When convicted criminal Alfred Ganz (James Remar) escapes from prison with the help of his partner Billy Bear, they go on to shoot and kill two police officers and barely missing Jack.
Jack knows this isn’t going to be a case which will be easily solved, Alfred have taken a girl hostage when her boyfriend refuses to pay money that he owes them. Jack knows he needs help to solve the case and that help comes from the most unlikely source. Quick witted Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) is a former partner of the two men therefore knows them inside out, he’s currently serving 3 years in prison for armed robbery, two and a half of which he’s already served. Jack agrees to get Reggie out of prison if he helps him, however the two quickly clash and things are going to be more difficult than they expected to bring these cold blooded killers to justice.
48 Hours is something that has recently been doing it’s rounds on the Sky Movies channels and I decided to watch it on the recommendation of my Dad after hearing how much he enjoyed it, we tend to have very similar tastes in films so I was expecting to thoroughly enjoy this. Being a big fan of Eddie Murphy
is something that made me want to see this even more.
Nick Nolte is someone that I’m not too familiar with, I vaguely remember seeing his name in the credits of Cape Fear as he looked very different but other than that I haven’t seen him in anything else. After his performance in this film I’m not particularly interested in seeing him anything else again. He plays a very gruff, moody talking cop in this film. Some women seem to like the brooding and moody macho type, I’m not such a fan of it. He simply has no personality in this film at all and is nowhere near as likeable as his co-star. You don’t care about his character at all, even when he’s being shot at you don’t care what happens to him whatsoever. He’s also a chain smoker and throughout the film I don’t think I saw him without a cigarette in his mouth once, this became very tiresome and was something that wasn’t necessary to the storyline at all.
Eddie Murphy, although good in this film he’s not as charismatic as he normally is in his films. This being his breakout role you can cut him some slack because he does play an extremely likeable character. Despite being a convict you can’t help but feel for his character and his constant quest to pull any woman about because he’s been without for the last 2 and a half years. Eddie Murphy provides a lot, if not all of the comedy in the film with his quick talking witty ways. I do think that he always plays a stereotypical character though as although the characters he play changes over the years he still always seems to play a witty guy who talks one to the dozen, even in Shrek he’s practically the same character. Despite all this I’m a big fan of Eddie Murphy, I think he’s a brilliant comedy actor which is why he’s been able to stay in the spotlight for all these years. He doesn’t appear in the film until nearly half an hour in and considering this film only lasts around 90 minutes he’s not exactly the lead role yet he without doubt steals the show in every way possible and it’s no surprise that he’s still a massive star today.
The bad guys acting is absolutely dreadful, they just don’t stand out at all, the main bad guy is played by James Remar who you may recognise as the smooth talking hotel entrepreneur Richard Wright from Sex And The City, I think he’s much better suited to those kinds of roles because he simply had no personality in this at all. It was simply a case of him breaking out of prison during the first 5 minutes of the film then going onto kill two police officers with no apparent reason. The story doesn’t give them anything to work with which would make them bad guys that we love to hate, they’re just there, they could be two men that the director simply pulled in off the street as they don’t exude anything which make them stand out from the crowd.
I had high hopes for this film and even with a stand-out performance from Eddie Murphy the film still seemed to fall flat for me, it just didn’t seem to gel well and the core storyline wasn’t really explained in enough detail. After about an hour of this I started to find myself willing it on until the end, I did stick it out until the end but I was very glad when it finished. This is a typical 80’s action thriller with old convertible cars flying through the streets of America, fist fights with all the ridiculous Chinese Martial arts sound effects and your typical gruff, macho cop with the bad hair cut! It’s safe to say that this film hasn’t aged well.
The story becomes very slow quite quickly, despite all the action involved, without a strong enough storyline the film simply falls flat and becomes very tiresome and run of the mill, it was the comedy that really stood out for me. The two main actors work well together but unfortunately without Eddie Murphy’s comedy influence I fear this film would be absolutely dire.
I wouldn’t recommend watching this, if you’re a fan of bad 80’s action films then be my guest but there’s simply nothing about this film that stands out therefore apart from Eddie Murphy there’s nothing redeemable about the film.
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
hubby loved this film - it was quite funny in parts as well - lyn x
LawrenceP 22.07.2009 10:07
erm...he killed the cops because they were comin g to arrest him after his break from prison...I think was the reason. I get the impression you were determined not to like this movie before watching. People who don't get 80's movies shouldn't watch them. :)
Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy make one of the most unusual and entertaining teams ever in ... more
Walter Hill's roller-coaster thriller, '48 Hours'. Nolte is a rough-edged cop hunting two vicious cop-killers. He can't do it without the help of smooth and dapper ...
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Jul 22nd, 2009
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