2 out of 5

Director: Kevin Smith

Well, everyones divided. Your loyalty to this film will depend on which actors you prefer. Me? I dont particularly find Tracy Morgan or Seann William Scott funny, and as most of the humor relies on playing off of them, it was hard to string laughs together consistently for me – which is unfortunate, since you have the rumblings of what couldve been a funny film. Cop Out has some nice elements for buddy cop fare. A pretty good plot device – Willis, a cop, hoping to pay for his daughters wedding with an extremely valuable baseball card which, for various reasons, ends up in the hands of some Brooklyn gangsters, causing Willis and his partner, Tracy Morgan – both suspended – to break some rules, shoot the bad guys and steal back the card. Silly, but totally workable, and quirky comic fare. And also props to the writers for giving the duo a nice jolt – theyre not the jaded cop and his crazy rookie partner, theyve been partners for nine years, work together well, and though rough around the edges, arent particularly wacky or straight-laced, theyre just good cops with bad luck. Now while Kevin Smith has his strengths and he does succeed in making a convincing action film, his directing style is mostly to let his actors work and then piece it together later. Willis acts best with a strong director (I think…) and so this freedom lets him settle into a pretty typical Willis role, which has to feed off of Tracy Morgan, who, unfortunately, is of the later breed of SNLers who are too self-aware in their humor to be really funny. And Scott has his place in the comedy world but his stoner persona is too close to his real personality to be smart dumb comedy and instead is just… worrisome. So… poor casting and an unreigned Willis make this an entertaining enough film (and the expanded blu-ray version with all the Kevin Smith extras is def. worthwhile) but disappointingly disjointed.