The sergeant was basically a jewel thief cast as a cop; Jonathan Banks, around the time of 48 Hours and before Beverly Hills Cop, would have been perfect as the one missing type, the 40-year character actor. — Bill Simmons
Jonathan Banks was a first-ballot that guy from Wiseguy and Beverly Hills Cop for 20 plus years until Breaking Bad made him Emmy winner Jonathan Banks; Ronnie Cox was a that guy who ripped off Vision Quest, Cop and Cop 2, RoboCop, Total Recall and San Elsewhere (as transcribed) and eventually became Ronnie Cox.
James Russo is one host's winner, though another cannot name anything else he has been in; a different pick is Michael Champion, one of Maitland's men alongside Banks, who was in Total Recall, Hill Street Blues and V as the slimy sidekick to the heavy; Russo is acting as if he is in a Michael Cimino movie and taking it out on Beverly Hills Cop; Stephen Elliott, the chief, is a TV actor to end all TV actors.
The first 19 minutes; obvious stunt doubles; Victor Maitland's reaction to Mikey's death; the homophobia (nominated, then partly defended); Taggart punching Axel; Maitland's useless bodyguards; the Rolling Stone and Michael Jackson name-drop
The first 19 minutes could zip by faster; 1984 was not the peak of masking stunt work, so a guy gets punched and a different man flies through the window, Magnum PI level stunts: the man thrown through the buffet table is not Jonathan Banks, the truck driver has a mullet while the man who climbs out has a bald spot, Victor's tumble down the steps and Eddie through the plate glass are doubles; tumbling action has gone out of style and now reads as farce.
Victor Maitland's reaction to Mikey's death is so bad that Stephen Burkoff (as transcribed) should have spent weeks in character; he has been in a Bond movie and is a good 80s guy; 80s villains were almost always played by sexy men, even Jonathan Banks, the future Mike Ermantrout (as transcribed), has an attractive energy.
The whole movie is pairs of men, five different pairs with no female interruption, like Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas driving and looking at each other; it only jokes about that once at the club, is not homophobic, and is not afraid of what it means to have two men in close proximity.
Homophobia is proposed for what aged worst, but one host finds it less homophobic than memory suggested: you simply see gay people be gay, Damon Wayans plays an effeminate man, and the one not-great moment is Eddie using a made-up disease, Herbie simplex 10 (as transcribed), as a weapon on the maitre d'; the defense is that the characters he invents are bits to get him into the next room, like the loudmouth journalist at the Beverly Palms; Eddie's early-80s homophobia is remembered from the stand-up specials and a little of 48 Hours, not this.
Taggart punching Axel is pretty bad given what has been seen of the LA police, though Taggart then comes out, apologizes and offers to let charges be pressed; Maitland's bodyguards aged badly because all of them were terrible, and the strategy is dissected: five guys come in, four huge ones carry Axel through the building and the fifth just walks in front, so they can throw him through the window as evidence of a public disturbance.
No white person thrown through that window ends up charged with public disturbance and in a police department; Axel never resists arrest because he is a cop from Detroit and a black man who knows what cops do, and he knows Todd will eventually vouch for him; the movie star's entitlement that the plot will give him something to do sits beside the reality of a black person in police presence, and there is a character logic in revealing less to learn how these officers act.
When 48 Hours was a rewatchable the fight between Eddie and Nick Nolte looked like Nolte would kill him, so two years later the formula seems tweaked so Axel is never roughed up beyond a punch in the stomach, the window and being knocked out in the opening.
Getting into the Beverly Palm by name-dropping Rolling Stone and a Michael Jackson profile is offered for aged worst; a follow-up, explicitly not offered as aged worst, is how magazines substitute for mobile phones: Rosewood reading Time about red meat, Victor Maitland flipping through a magazine in Jenny's office, and Jonathan Banks reading National Geographic, which is just how people passed time in 1984.
Sure; the obvious role is Billy Bear but you cannot cut Sonny Landham, so young Danny Trejo could be a convict on the opening chain gang or a cop in the precinct, or Jonathan Banks's partner who gets killed; the answer settles on Kehoe, voiced twice, since Trejo could then go evil in Another 48 Hours; it is always a favorite category because no movie has been found that Trejo would not have improved.
Jack handing over his gun; why Luther left the money in Reggie's car for years; Rosalie vanishes; no manhunt for Gans; the $957 suit; the lost twelve hours; Jack's dates with Annette O'Toole's character; Reggie leaving the hotel for Roman's; the easy return to Billy Bear's apartment; the Roman's girl; the night's timeline
Jack Cates giving up his gun when Jonathan Banks's cop has been shot but is not dead is not 1982 police procedure, and since these men have already shot cops one more hostage should not be enough; it should be a Mexican standoff.
Why was Reggie's car in the parking garage so long, and if Luther had the keys why did he wait for Gans to break out of prison instead of taking the money any time, and why does he have the keys at all; Rosalie screams when Luther is shot on the bus and is never seen again, presumably killed, perhaps cut because the movie had been hard enough on women.
Why there is no bigger manhunt for Gans after he kills two cops, unless it is the early-eighties feel of a city under budget siege; only Cates seems to be on it, and when he phones for messages after parting from Reggie at the subway the station of thirty people is business as usual.
Whether Reggie's suit would really cost $957, a lot of money then, perhaps a two-thousand-dollar suit adjusted for inflation or even ten thousand; it should have said $457.
The morning timeline: they wake, Luther crosses the street and gets the car, the chase leads to the subway and a near shootout, Gans and Billy Bear escape, Jack is nearly arrested by cops who do not know he is a cop, and Reggie runs after the money at about 9:30; the next scene is at night, so Reggie is gone ten to twelve hours before he phones from Roman's.
Is anyone worried that Jack has now lost the cop killers twice and lost the man he sprung for forty-eight hours; Reggie follows Luther to the hotel, eight hours pass, and he turns up at Roman's with a gun he somehow acquired, presumably from a friend.
The biggest nitpick is Jack making dates with Annette O'Toole's character during a cop-killer investigation, with her complaining that he makes her work too hard at it, which makes her a terrible girlfriend; Reggie leaving the hotel assuming Luther is in for twelve hours instead of hanging outside is an investigative faux pas, and Billy going back to his ex-girlfriend should have been staked out instead of abandoned after thirty seconds.
A tally of Jack and Reggie's interactions: a fistfight, Reggie coming clean, sleeping in the car without talking, the morning chase, the split, ten hours apart, Roman's, the bus chase and shooting at the bus; then Frank McRae's captain yells and Jack tells him Reggie has more guts than any partner after about ten minutes together and a stream of racial insults, which is movie magic.
Circling back to Billy Bear's apartment the second time is too easy, and if the girls there were harboring Billy why do they call the cops on Jack and Reggie; most importantly, Olivia Brown's character dances with Reggie once and is immediately ready to go across the street with him, paying since he has no money, until he spots Luther; the evening's clock is debated between 7:30, 8 and 10 with Roman's pumping.
After the bus crashes and the sheriff yells, there are drinks, Billy Bear, a big fight and Gans shot around two in the morning at a homicide scene, yet Eddie finds the Roman's girl, whose name he may not know, the same night; someone named Zach is asked when San Francisco bars closed in the eighties, and a reconstructed clock from a 7 o'clock Roman's to an 11 o'clock shootout leaves the girl waiting nine hours; a lot of holes.
Not since the Heat episode have there been this many nominees: James Remar as Gans; Sonny Landham as Billy Bear, whose box score is likened to Ben Wallace in 2006, seventeen rebounds and five blocks in nine minutes, plus forty; and Jonathan Banks as the cop who gets shot, with the plea not to give Gans the gun.
Brian James as Kehoe (transcribed 'Keough') is hated because he becomes the bad guy in Another 48 Hours; Olivia Brown, future Miami Vice star, plays the girl who falls for Reggie Hammond in a minute.
One host names James Remar the winner; the other disputes it and goes with Frank McRae as Captain Hayden, quoting his suspension-and-review-board tirade; a tangent on great angry captains includes Cobb in Beverly Hills Cop; McRae is a great eighties cop captain who played the cop in about five movies and surprisingly never demands Jack's gun and badge here.
The Remar pick stands and the choice is respected as what makes the category great; the objection is that Gans is so evil, though believably and never-not evil, killing something like nine cops over five hundred thousand dollars because he likes it.
