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.
Nolte's look into the camera after Reggie falls asleep in the car; Reggie sleeping in the open-top car on a cold San Francisco night after the fight, fed only a Zagnut; Jack's apology
There is not a lot of unintentional comedy because the intentional comedy succeeds; the one moment comes after Jack and Reggie beat each other up and the bathroom confrontation where Reggie finally talks: they wait for the car in the parking garage, Reggie beds down in the back seat asking Jack for a bedtime story and gets a profane refusal; an aside notes Frank McRae once played defensive tackle for the Bears.
The camera then stays on Nolte, who takes a hit from his flask, looks around and stares into the lens before the cut, probably just drunk; the other host's picks are the idea that Eddie Murphy could sleep in an open-top sedan on a thirty-degree San Francisco night after a fight with Nolte having eaten only a Zagnut, and Jack's apology exchange, hilarious because Eddie accepts it.
Eddie Murphy: one host says yes, ahead of Beverly Hills Cop; the other thinks Cop was his Apex Mountain as a better overall performance carried alone, answered with the forty-and-twenty-five box score he puts up here; after Cop, without Nolte or Dan Aykroyd beside him, he and Michael Jackson were the two biggest stars in the world, and both films rank above Trading Places.
Nick Nolte: no; Blue Chips and Prince of Tides are floated, Prince of Tides for success, North Dallas 40 as probably his best performance since you believe he played in the NFL, plus Rich Man, Poor Man watched by fifty million, Cape Fear and Who Will Stop the Rain; a lot of really good work but nothing definitively incredible, so no apex.
Walter Hill: The Long Riders, his Western about the James gang from around the same time, is raised first, but this film is called very high and 'this one' is the answer given; San Francisco is a great movie character rarely maximized like this, with Mrs. Doubtfire, Pacific Heights, Dirty Harry and Bullitt as other San Francisco movies, and the film captures the city's old cow-town backwater quality.
Sonny Landham: no, Predator is his apex, cutting his chest with a knife and waiting for the predator, on the same bill as Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Ventura, his political mentor; James Remar: one hundred percent yes, though one host's wife wanted Sex and the City named instead.
Remar is also great in The Warriors, and Gans has an ignominious ending, roughing up the female cop for no reason, which flips the audience from liking a badass to recoiling; he works constantly, turning up in What Lies Beneath at two in the morning; Olivia Brown's apex was Miami Vice; Frank McRae topped out here.
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.
