Taglines: Rock out with your glock out.
Two longtime NYPD partners on the trail of a stolen, rare, mint-condition baseball card find themselves up against a merciless, memorabilia-obsessed gangster. But before they can recover the prized `52 Pafko, they must first rescue a Mexican beauty who holds the key to millions of dollars in off-shore bank accounts—and who has already witnessed one high-profile murder because of them.
Veteran detective Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) needs to cash in on his perfect Pafko in order to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, but in the tradition of everything that can go wrong…it’s pilfered before he has a chance to collect. Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) is Jimmy’s “partner-against-crime,” whose preoccupation with his wife’s alleged infidelity makes it hard for him to keep his eye on the ball, or his mind on the crime. Already in trouble and with nothing left to lose, Jimmy and Paul will have to break all the rules—including enlisting the aid of stoner thief Dave (Seann William Scott), who’s working Paul’s last nerve as Paul and Jimmy try to work the case.
Cop Out is a 2010 American buddy cop action-comedy film directed and edited by Kevin Smith, written by Mark and Robb Cullen and starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Kevin Pollak and Seann William Scott. The plot revolves around two veteran NYPD partners (Willis and Morgan) on the trail of a stolen, rare, mint-condition baseball card who find themselves up against a relentless, memorabilia-obsessed bloodthirsty gangster. This is the first film that Smith directed that he did not also write. It is Kevin Smith’s highest grossing film.
Captain Romans
“There’s a right way to do police work, and a wrong way. Then there’s the way you two do it.”
“Cop Out” stars action favorite Bruce Willis and comedy king Tracy Morgan as Brooklyn-based NYPD detectives Jimmy Monroe and Paul Hodges, partners on the trail of a stolen piece of valuable memorabilia…and this time, it’s personal: the collectible, a rare baseball card, belongs to Jimmy, and is his only hope to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding. Along the way, however, the duo stumbles into the path of a seriously dangerous neighborhood gang leader looking to expand his trade.
From director Kevin Smith, “Cop Out” is in many ways a throwback to the classic buddy cop movie—one of cinema’s most popular film genres—with Smith’s own slightly skewed view. Directing for the first time from someone else’s script, Smith’s initial reaction to the screenplay was that it was “steeped in movie cop heritage. When I read it, I thought, ‘Wow, if I’d ever written a buddy cop movie, it would be like this.’”
States producer Marc Platt, “One of the things Kevin does so well in his films is the relationships, particularly between the guys. There’s an honesty to it, a relatability to it, they feel like guys that we all know.”
Producer Michael Tadross agrees. “Bruce, as Jimmy, is the straight man and Tracy, as Paul, is this crazy guy, and it just works.”
“The script just made me laugh out loud when I read it,” says Willis. “It was really funny…the kind of film you tell your friends to go see.”
Having previously worked with Smith nearly a decade ago, Morgan says of the director, “He knows it, he gets it. He’s a comedian’s comedian. He directs in a way where you think you know the scene, but he’ll say, ‘Yo, do this or do that, say this or say that,’ and it gives it a whole different spin. I love the way he directs.”
“Kevin has a rapport with his audience that is magic,” states producer Polly Johnsen. “His films allow viewers to relate to the characters as the funnier versions of themselves, and take them along for the ride. It’s an awesome entertainment experience. I want to come back in my next life as Kevin Smith.”
Teaming Willis and Morgan, Smith notes, “My forte is really two dudes talking to each other,” says Smith. “This film has that, plus more action than anything I’ve done before. Though there are no action figures for this one…yet. I’ll find a way,” quips the director, who is also famous for being a collector.
Smith continues, “For me, the biggest influence I drew from in making ‘Cop Out’ was Abbott and Costello. This is very much like an Abbott and Costello movie…with guns. If I made this movie, and my father was still alive and saw it, he’d say, ‘You do make movies! I just thought it was you and your friends running around with a camera talking about not being able to get laid, but this has a plot, there are guns…Bruce Willis is in it!”
Combined with Smith’s subversive comic talent and skill for improvising while shooting, and the fast and very real dialogue written by Mark Cullen and Robb Cullen, who also serve as executive producers, the result is, according to Smith, “exactly the kind of movie my dad would’ve taken me to see when I was 13.”
The Cullen brothers, who penned the script, have known Smith for a while. “The second we met him, we loved him,” says Mark. “He’s the smartest, sweetest guy I know.”
Adds Robb, “There was no better choice for us than Kevin, because when you talk about funny and dark and wonderfully mean-spirited, there’s probably nobody funnier, darker, more wonderfully mean-spirited than Kevin Smith. So, it was a natural for us; our senses of humor and our sensibilities are very similar.”
“I instantly fell in love with the chemistry on the page between the two characters,” Platt says. “Their relationship as cops and their friendship—they were instantly relatable as guys going through their own stuff at home, and trying to be good cops at the same time. But it was their friendship and loyalty in spite of their sort of personal differences that really made me root for them.”
The film is set in the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, where the NYPD is dealing with the steadily increasing violence and robberies coming largely from the Mexican drug cartel gangs. The writers spent many hours with contacts at the LAPD, which gave them insight into the real problems police and detectives face in their line of work as they developed the narrative flow of the storyline.
“Some of the things that we kept on hearing, beyond the challenges of the job, were, ‘Oh, we’re getting divorced, my wife’s cheating on me, I’m cheating on my wife,’” says Mark. “It’s a recurring theme among cops because of the hours they spend away from their families. It’s a very hard job to have and keep a relationship going, because you’re risking your life every second of the day, then going home. And you don’t want to talk about how your day was, ‘cause it’s horrifying. All you want to do is just decompress.”
The writers wanted to create a humorous base for the action to play off. As Robb describes it, “Funny is funnier coming out of something tragic or painful.”
Tadross reveals that the secret of portraying a cop in a comedy is to take it seriously. “You have to first have respect for the cops going in, whether you’re a writer or an actor. Then you can play them in a comedic sense, and it’s humorous. If you’re going to write a goofy cop role, like the Cullens did with Paul, or play a goofy cop, like Tracy does, you still have to show respect for the job. Then it’s believable. Then it works.”
Cop Out (2010)
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring by: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott, Adam Brody, Kevin Pollak, Jason Lee, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mark Consuelos, Mando Alvarado, Alberto Bonilla, Guillermo Díaz
Screenplay by: Robb Cullen, Marc Cullen
Production Design by: Michael Shaw
Cinematography by: David Klein
Film Editing by: Kevin Smith
Costume Design by: Juliet Polcsa
Set Decoration by: Chryss Hionis
Art Direction by: Jonathan Arkin, Jordan Jacobs
Music by: Harold Faltermeyer
MPAA Rating: R for Pervasive language including sexual references, violence, sexuality.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: February 26, 2010
