48 Hrs.

48 Hrs. (1982) is set in San Francisco. A fugitive who has killed two policemen is being hunted. Detective Jack Cates takes the man's former partner out of prison for forty eight hours; Reggie Hammond knows the streets and knows where the money is. The two of them cannot stand each other. The film is counted among the works that set the template for the buddy cop picture. Freebie and the Bean came earlier, in 1974, but this is what fixed the formula; Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour come from here. It is Eddie Murphy's first major screen role. He was known then for Saturday Night Live, and others had been considered first. Walter Hill originally imagined Richard Pryor as the convict opposite someone like Clint Eastwood. When that fell through, Gregory Hines came up. Murphy was suggested to Hill by his own girlfriend. He was nominated for the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. The script was rewritten over years. Hill has said he wanted to explode the usual conventions, focusing on the relationship rather than the plot; in the weeks before shooting he and writer Larry Gross reshaped the material around the two leads. It cost twelve million dollars and made roughly 78.9 million in America, the seventh highest grossing film of 1982. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: eighties action, two hander chemistry, and the arrival of Eddie Murphy. Less good for: the racist and misogynist dialogue is heavy, and the bar scene, the most argued about sequence in it, plays badly now. The violence is harsh and the villain is one dimensional.