When you talk about buddy movies, what films usually come to mind, Lethal Weapon? Midnight Run? Rush Hour? Or how about Walter Hill's 1982 masterpiece of violent action comedy 48 HOURS?
48 HOURS
Year: 1982
Director: Walter Hill
Stars: Nick Nolte. Eddie Murphy
Run Time: 96 mins
Review Written By Peter Osmond
Eddie Murphy burst onto the scene in this thundering, non-stop action flick after blowing up on the comedy circuit with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, landing a job as a cast member of America's long running late night comedy sketch show, Saturday Night Live aka SNL. But it was here, his first role in a movie where he really took off, playing motormouthed con man and criminal Reggie Hammond.
Made 2 years prior to his smash hit cop flick Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours contains everything we've
come to expect from the Buddy flick, a mismatched duo, some epic back and fourth banter and the adrenaline fueled action, of which 48 Hours has plenty of. Less of a breakneck paced action flick we'd come to associate with the 1980s and taking cues from what is essentially a 70s crime thriller, a genre which or era in which Walter made his bones with films like The Driver (1978) as director and as writer on Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972), Hickey & Boggs (1972), Paul Newman's Harper sequel, The Drowning Pool (1975) and of course The Warriors (1979). Walter Hill was well versed in the action/crime genre and 48 Hours allowed him as both a writer and a director to make the transition from noir-ish crime cinema into what we now perceive as the action-comedy, although i'd put the excellent Richard Rush film, Freebie & The Bean (1974) as the front runner for the first straight up action comedy film.
Hill paired Eddie Murphy with the gruff, stoic persona of Nick Nolte, an actor well known for appearances in The Deep (1977) Dog Soldiers aka Who'll Stop The Rain (1978) and American football comedy, North Dallas Forty (1979). So Nolte and Murphy are our odd pairing.
The plot follows two convicts who escape a chain-gang and go on the run, making their way to San Francisco in search of some money. After they're cornered by two cops and joined by Nolte's Det. Jack Cates, A shoot out in a hotel see's the villains, psychotically played with brilliance by James Remar, a Hill veteran after co-starring as Ajax in Hill's previous The Warriors, here playing Ganz, and Sonny Landham, most well known for his portrayal of Billy, the native American soldier who was part of Dutch's Black-ops squad in Predator (1987), here cutting a more imposing form and again playing a character called Billy. Ganz holds a gun to the hotel receptionist's head and forces Cates to hand over his gun or he'd kill her. Cates agrees, allowing Ganz and Billy to escape, with Ganz in possession of Cates' gun.
They discover that Ganz is an old acquaintance of con-man and thief, Reggie Hammond, currently serving the last 6 months of a 3 year sentence. Cates get's Hammond out of pokey for a 48 hour release to help catch Ganz. The two mean trade insults and banter between stakeout's and gunfights.
Eddie Murphy really is the star of 48 Hours even though he's second billed, it might have worked well with Richard Prior in the role of Reggie Hammond but I don't think we would have gotten the same level of improve from him that Murphy brings to the film.
If you recall all 3 Beverly Hills Cop movies, there are moments where Axel pretends to be someone else, most noteably Johnny Wishbone in BHC2, Well there a scene in 48 Hours which is very reminiscent of those scenes, the hill-billy bar sequence where Reggie pretends to be a cop is one of THE standout moments in the film and shows just how deadpan Murphy can be.
Nick Nolte actually comes out swinging as Jack Cates, the gruff almost rebelleous detective on the search for Ganz and his gun and he's great to watch. He's more physical in this than any film i've seen him in and I look forward to seeing him in Angel Has Fallen (2019).
There's some great support actors that pop up in 48 Hours, recognizable faces from the 80s, you know the type, those character actors who show up in almost every thing that came out between 1980 and 1994. Kicking off we get Jonathan Banks, probably more well known now for his role of Mike in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul or if like me, you'd recognize him more as Zack, Victor Maitland's right hand man in Beverly Hills Cop or as Deputy Brent in Gremlins. Then we have the brilliant late Brion James, a face we all know from Tango & Cash, Steel Dawn, Cherry 2000 and The Fifth Element, as Cates' fellow detective who shows up in Hill's not-as-good follow-up Another 48 Hours (1990), Star Trek's Denise Crosby appears as one of Billy's girlfriends and we get the great Peter Jason, a mainstay of John Carpenter's movies and Walter Hill's massively underrated cult film, Streets Of Fire.
Hill's direction is fast paced, exciting and the film never ever feels slow. I've always found Hill's films to have an urgency about them but they've never felt like they're rushing through the plot. Some of Hills films have felt like the director has lost his edge especially with Wild Bill (1995) which is more a meandering mess than a coherent narrative and he is responsible for the creation of the best DTV action franchise in the last 20 years with his original prison boxing drama, Undisputed (2002).
If it weren't for 48 Hours, we would never have films like Lethal Weapon, Last Boy Scout, Rush Hour etc and because of this we should be thankful to Walter Hill and co-writer Roger Spottiswood for giving the world Reggie Hammond. 48 Hours is a great film. It's fun, action packed, a real R-rated action flick and it's definitely worth your time.
There's a new sheriff in town, and his name is...REGGIE HAMMOND!!!
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