Writer/director Adam McKay and his pal Will Farrell come together once again to breathe life into another tired genre. This time it's the buddy cop film.
It is quite amusing that Kevin Smith originally wanted Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg for 'Cop Out' as he tried to revive the buddy cop film genre. As much as I love Kevin Smith I found this film to be slightly better, but not by much. The first half is hilarious and has some brilliantly funny scenes. However the second half really drags with some unnecessary scenes, while as funny as they are, were not important to the plot. Towards the end I was getting annoyed and hoping they would wrap things up a lot quicker once you know where it is going. The other problem is the action scenes are very poorly directed. The whole Paul Greengrass quick cut, frantic camera move thing is all well and good but when over done can make the action look confusing. I had a lot of trouble working out what was going on as the camera could not focus on the right part of the action and give any sense of geography to what was going on. I did like the plot and how it looks at the often over looked area of law enforcement known as forensic accounting.
For me Will Ferrell can be pretty hit and miss. He is a really gifted comedic actor but not all his films work. The improvisation style that he does only works sometimes and there are some great scenes in this film where it works. But others do not. The real joy though is getting to see Mark Wahlberg doing comedy. Normally you would expect him to play the roles that Samuel L. Jackson or Dwayne Johnson do but it is great to see him play the less macho role. Mark is hilarious in this film and I hope it leads to more comedies. I also liked seeing Michael Keaton back on screen again. Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson are great in their roles as well. Eva Mendes looks like she is having fun doing comedy as well.
A decent action/comedy tat is good for the first half but really drags in the second half. The less said about the filming of the action scenes the better.
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