The “buddy cop” framework is one of the most beloved subgenres of action cinema. Movies about mismatched detectives trying to solve a case present the perfect opportunity to blend laughs and thrills. They’re a great vehicle for showcasing two actors’ on-screen chemistry and the premise is simplistic enough for every filmmaker to have a fresh spin on it (although that’s not always the case). When the buddy cop subgenre is traced back to its origins, Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon is often named as the first one.
Starring Mel Gibson as a young hotshot renegade cop and Danny Glover as the veteran detective on the brink of retirement who reluctantly partners up with him, Lethal Weapon is a quintessential buddy cop movie that laid a lot of the groundwork for the subgenre. But five years earlier, Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs. defined most of the tropes.
Released in 1982 to critical acclaim and massive box office success, 48 Hrs. tells the story of a grizzled cop who reluctantly lets a petty thief out of prison to help him catch his old partners-in-crime. As the title would suggest, they have two days to catch the bad guys. With brisk pacing, economic storytelling, and a nice blend of high-octane action and laugh-out-loud gags, 48 Hrs. became a hit with audiences and, eventually, a genre of its own.
One Of Walter Hill’s Many Action Classics
Hill is one of the most celebrated action directors of all time. “Buddy cop” is just one of many action subgenres he defined with an untouchable, hugely influential classic. Hard Times is the ultimate fight movie, The Driver is the ultimate car chase movie, and The Warriors is the ultimate dystopian gang warfare movie. And 48 Hrs., released after all those gems, is the ultimate buddy cop movie.
In this sense, Lethal Weapon is like John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. Halloween is similarly labeled the earliest example of a subgenre that had already been around for a few years. Arriving years after Psycho, Black Christmas, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween was hardly the first slasher, but it’s the template that horror filmmakers go back to when they’re making their own.
48 Hrs. Created Two Of Lethal Weapon’s Tropes
Although recent buddy cop narratives like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier have forgotten this, the crux of these stories is the conflict between the lead characters. The action-packed police investigation is just the external conflict; the real meat of the story is the odd couple dynamic of two diametrically opposed lawmen gradually becoming friends.
Two of the most overused clichés in this kind of dynamic are giving the two characters different races and including a generational gap in their ages. 48 Hrs. created these tropes and Lethal Weapon adheres to both of them. In the ‘80s, this was a fresh concept (even the second time), but it’s since been done to death.
The Perfect Casting Of Nick Nolte And Eddie Murphy
The key to casting a buddy cop duo is finding actors who not only share convincing chemistry as affectionate frenemies, but also individually embody their roles perfectly. 48 Hrs. succeeds on both counts with Nick Nolte as gruff veteran detective Jack Cates and Eddie Murphy as street-smart motormouth Reggie Hammond.
Playing Reggie in 48 Hrs. marked Murphy’s film debut while he was still a scene-stealing cast member at Saturday Night Live. Murphy not only managed to hold his own opposite Nolte, who’d been appearing in movies for a decade at that point; he stole the whole movie, with Nolte acting as the deadpan “straight man.”
48 Hrs. Isn’t Technically A “Buddy Cop” Movie At All
Technically, 48 Hrs. isn’t quite a “buddy cop” movie, because only one of them is a cop. But not all buddy cop movies are necessarily about cops. In fact, some of the genre’s greatest entries have nothing to do with cops: Point Break is about an FBI agent and a surfer; The Nice Guys is about two competing private investigators; Men in Black is about a secret government agency that protects Earth from alien invaders.
The premise of 48 Hrs. set the mold for Midnight Run, which stars Robert De Niro as a bounty hunter and Charles Grodin as a wanted mob accountant. Following De Niro’s attempts to keep his latest bounty out of the hands of the feds, the mafia, and rival bounty hunters before he can collect, Midnight Run is essentially Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with guns.
In the literal sense, 48 Hrs. and Midnight Run aren’t “buddy cop” movies, because the buddies aren’t both cops (or neither of them is). But, if anything, the 48 Hrs. formula is more effective at driving the conflict of a buddy cop narrative. A cop and a convict are inherently more mismatched than two cops. The problem with some buddy cop stories is that the lead characters simply aren’t different enough: they’re both good guys, they’re both in law enforcement, they both have exactly the same goal in a given case.
48 Hrs. Isn’t Technically The First Buddy Cop Movie, Either
Technically, 48 Hrs. is predated by a couple of other buddy cop movies. 1974’s Freebie and the Bean stars James Caan and Alan Arkin as two quirky detectives who go on a rampage across San Francisco to bring down a mob boss. This one has a much darker sense of humor than the commercially viable buddy cop flicks of the ‘80s. 1976’s The Enforcer paired up Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” Callahan with a naive, bright-eyed rookie played by Tyne Daly. It has a few deadpan comedic moments (including one scene in which Eastwood stumbles into a porno shoot), but as a Dirty Harry movie, it’s much grittier than the average buddy cop actioner.
In terms of buddy cop history, Freebie and the Bean and The Enforcer are like the gruesome Italian slashers that predated Halloween. They were a necessary breakthrough in the genre, but didn’t get it into the mainstream. Their successor 48 Hrs. and its own successor Lethal Weapon are both timeless action classics that deftly blend visceral thrills with endearing banter.