Lethal Weapon
Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) was a married, focused, and responsible man. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), is an unpredictable guy. Together, they shouldered a film, Lethal Weapon, which ended up becoming a franchise and which gave rise to three other films with the same protagonists (and the saga began with Roger Murtaugh's last day of work before his retirement). Riggs and Murtaugh weren't the ones who invented the bromance (the romance between male friends), but they raised it to a bar rarely seen on film again.
Fair Killing
Righteous Murder is one of those detective films that would have gone unnoticed if it weren't for one detail: in it, two of the best actors of all time, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, are reunited and working side by side. Before meeting in Righteous Kill, each of them has starred in iconic films separately, but this film is only the third in which they act together and the first in which they share a plane for almost the entire length. Before, they had coincided in the second part of The Godfather (1974), without sharing any frames, and in Heat, in which the thief (DeNiro) and the policeman (Pacino) were barely together for two minutes in a single scene. The thriller went unnoticed, largely because each actor, in addition to contributing his dose of talent, also contributed a lot of tics that weighed down the result. So much so that Peter Travers, the critic for Roling Stone, said: "That scene they share in Heat is more worthwhile than the two hours of Righteous Kill."
Two Rebel Cops
Before embarking on the three films in the Transformers saga, Michael Bay also set the stage with another film that ultimately ended up with a sequel. It was Two Bad Boys, a very well-made police buddy movie with a thousand explosions, very careful shots, funny dialogues, soap opera humor, and enough fireworks to keep a public devouring popcorn on edge. Of course, of argument, zero. Above all, their leading couple, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, stood out, whom they came to describe as the dream team of comedy and who they repeated in the sequel to this film created by and for entertainment. And that is too much already.
Training Day
The combination of a policeman with more flight hours than an Aeroflot plane and an agent fresh out of the academy always gives a lot of play. And more so if both coincide in narcotics, which in Hollywood movies is like the black hole of police work. Here the agent back to everything is Denzel Washington and the kid who is going to experience his first day of training, Ethan Hawke. Added to the successful setting and a splendid script that dissects the perverse side of police ethics are the powerful direction of Antoine Fuqua and a masterful performance by Denzel Washington, who was rewarded with a well-deserved Oscar for embroidering a character that borders on the borderline at all times. blurs the line between legality and corruption in Training Day.
Seven
Another expert-novice couple. Veteran Lieutenant Somerset (Morgan Freeman), of the homicide department, is about to retire and be replaced by the ambitious and impulsive detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). Both must collaborate in solving a series of murders committed by a psychopath who is based on the relationship between even deadly sins. A priori, with that argument, a three-for-a-room telefilm could have come out, but at the controls of Seven was David Fincher, who turned the film into a journey of no return to horror and barbarism. And, of course, the fact that Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, with their unquestionable chemistry on screen, are the ones on this journey greatly improves everything.
Limit 48 hours
The opposition of characters also usually pays off in police movies. In Limit 48 Hours, the rough and tough policeman is Nick Nolte, and the rascal, Eddie Murphy made one of his first appearances on the big screen. And together they have to team up to stop two dangerous criminals in just 48 hours. The film has a hectic pace, some remarkable action scenes and the Nolte-Murphy couple delivers a brilliant 90 minutes without a breather. It did relatively well at the box office and had a sequel: 48 More Hours.
