When a sting goes bad and an informant is killed, NYPD partners Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are suspended without pay for thirty days. Scrambling to raise the money he needs to pay for his daughter’s wedding, Jimmy decides to sell a mint-condition baseball card he’s had since he was a kid. Before he can complete the transaction, the collectibles store is robbed, Jimmy is tasered, and the gun he’d borrowed from Paul is stolen.

After tracking down the parkour-loving bandit who nabbed the card, a talkative tool named Dave (Seann William Scott), Jimmy and Paul start looking for the guy to whom Dave sold the card and gun. That guy turns out to be Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz), a drug dealer currently in the midst of a violent plan to expand his business.

CRITIQUE

Given his obvious lack of finesse as a visual storyteller, a lot of people understandably wondered why Kevin Smith was hired to direct a movie he didn’t write. Even more puzzling was why someone would hire Smith to direct a movie that contained an action component.

How could a guy who’s obviously out of his comfort zone when doing anything other than simply photographing two people talking possibly be expected to stage shootouts and car chases? But it’s not hard to understand why Smith would actively pursue an outside project (this despite the fact he always fails when trying to be anyone but himself); after all, his last movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, grossed less than half what the prognosticators had predicted. And the budgets for his movies have steadily increased over the years, although the gross’s glass ceiling has never been shattered.

So if Smith had hopes of his horror flick Red State or that sci-fi flick he’s mentioned in passing a couple times ever going before the cameras, he had to prove he could turn more than a very modest profit. You can’t fault him for doing a work-for-hire job in hopes of making sure his personal projects don’t fall through, can you? He certainly wouldn’t be the first indie filmmaker to do so. But you can, however, fault him for picking a terrible script and turning in a final product that’s unfunny, flabby, and crudely made. Prepare yourself for a world in which many of the shots taken at Smith will end with “Cop Out” instead of “Jersey Girl.”

Before this movie went into production, a lot of buzz surrounded Robb and Mark Cullen’s script, which was written as an homage to such ‘80s genre classics as 48 HRS, Beverly Hills Cop, Fletch, Midnight Run, and Lethal Weapon. Thing is, while those movies are what purportedly influenced it, Cop Out has more in common with such ‘80s turkeys as Red Heat and Wise Guys. It’s a forced, lame attempt to recall the heyday of this sort of flick, proving that it takes more than a familiarity with a genre piece in order to successfully replicate one.

Had this script been around twenty-five years ago, I can’t imagine it would have attracted this sort of talent. It would have sat around until it reached the bottom rungs of the ladder, finally ending up in the hands of, say, Dabney Coleman and Matt Frewer. And it would have been released with no fanfare, grossed next to nothing, released on VHS with even less fanfare, collected dust on store shelves, and never given any sort of DVD release. Everyone would have forgotten about it, and the only mention it would ever get would be as part of an obscure joke in a review for the home-video release of a similar movie. If we’re lucky, though, there’ll never be another movie that requires a reference to Cop Out.

The movie’s other faults could be overlooked if it were funny, but it’s not. I can’t remember laughing even once. I almost did a couple times, but I never actually vocalized a laugh. Which is weird, as I laughed more than a few times during Mallrats, and I can even remember laughing during Jersey Girl (it was at something George Carlin and Steven Root did or said, but I can’t remember exactly what). I find it incredibly hard to believe the man who made Clerks and its sequel made a movie that couldn’t make me laugh at all, but damn if Smith didn’t do exactly that.

The banter between Willis and Morgan isn’t funny in the least, and the pop-culture references fall flat. Smith may have been able to put a long speech about the vagaries of working as a contractor for the Galactic Empire into one of his own movies and make it work, but Cop Out’s references to everything from Scarface to Robocop are lazy and annoying. And while he’s normally ruthless when it comes to cutting his own flicks, here Smith allows the movie to become bloated, letting scenes and riffs run to the point where they become crushingly boring and repetitive.

There’s an early scene that illustrates all of these flaws. Morgan is interrogating the aforementioned informant who will soon lose his life, and Morgan’s method consists of getting the guy in a headlock, holding his service piece to the guys head, and shouting out random movie quotes, which become increasingly more random as the scene progresses. Meanwhile, Willis stands on the other side of the interrogation room’s two-way mirror, identifying each movie Morgan is quoting. This goes on and on and on. And in what’s supposed to be the biggest laugh in the scene, Morgan quotes John McClane’s signature catchphrase, after which Willis states he never saw the movie from which it’s taken. Hilarious. And even the frequent scatology seems desperate; instead of bringing the same spin to it he has in his own movies, Smith can’t do anything here but make it seem puerile.        

Freeze the movie and many frames will look slicker than anything from any of Smith’s previous flicks (except for maybe Jersey Girl, but that’s due to Vilmos Zsigmond). Smith and frequent cinematographer Dave Klein have given the movie a far more polished look than any of their past collaborations (they even get to throw in an aerial shot, one that looks an awful lot like the opening of Lethal Weapon), but Smith, who also edited the movie, bungles all of the action. There’s a car chase that looks like it was staged by a couple of third-graders, and the shootouts are all botched to hell and back. Forget unfavorable comparisons to the works of Walter Hill or Martin Brest, Smith can even mount action that compares to what you’ll find in the Naked Gun flicks.

Speaking as someone who absolutely loves Clerks, its sequel, and Chasing Amy, I hope Smith is simply going through a slump (his comics work of late has also been disappointing), one that won’t drag on much longer. Hopefully he’ll stop picking fights with his Twitter followers, making ridiculous statements about critics, and turning his back on anyone who isn’t a slavish, ego-stroking follower, in turn getting back to what he does best. The world doesn’t need another Ralph Bakshi.

THE VIDEO

The 2.40:1/1080p transfer--encoded with VC-1 onto a 50GB disc--looks pretty good, but it’s riddled with moments where the photography looks as slapdash as the staging and blocking. Contrast is a bit on the hot side, and at times color reproduction is excellent, and close-ups are nicely detailed. Darker scenes can get a little muddled, and every so often a very flat shot finds its way in.

THE AUDIO

Maybe the intent was to make the movie’s sound design replicate that of an ‘80s flick, because this disc’s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot. Even with the action, dialogue is still the primary component of the mix; it sounds good, although there are some miffed lines scattered about. Gunshots sound okay, although they lack the heft and impact that’s the norm.

The music (Smith convinced Harold Faltermeyer to come out of retirement and bring the synthesizers with him) sounds good, arguably better than any other aspect of the audio. Surround action is very, very light, and not particularly impressive when it does come into play; the same is true of the low end.

French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are included.

THE EXTRAS

And here’s the rub: the Maximum Comedy Mode option on this disc is pretty damned great. Simply a re-titled Maximum Movie Mode track, this Smith-led experience combines commentary, pop-up factoids, split-screen behind-the-scenes footage, branching Focus Points clips, storyboards, inspirational platitudes from Scott (dubbed “Wisdom from the S*** Bandit”), and deleted/extended scenes to break down the movie’s production. All of the added material stretches out the running time by more than an hour, making the track an exhaustive look at the making of the movie. To say I enjoyed it a lot more than I did the movie itself--and I did--would be a massive understatement. 

If you don’t want to sit through the Maximum Comedy Mode in order to view them, the Wisdom from the S*** Bandit and Focus Points clips (all of which are presented in high-def) are available separately.

The disc will also allow you to access BD-Live content, although there’s no movie-specific material available.

Early pressings will also contain a second disc that houses both DVD and digital copies of the movie.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Simply put, Cop Out isn’t funny. Not-so-simply put, it’s overlong, sloppily written, poorly edited, and haphazardly directed. When Kevin Smith stumbles, he stumbles big, and this flick could very well be his biggest stumble yet.