BEFORE: And if I rescue "Wild" from the bottom of this list, this one sort of has to come along for the ride. This is because I tend to put two films on each DVD I burn, to take up less storage space, and I try to make sure those are two films that go together, or at least share a major star in common. So when I recorded "Wild", premium cable was also running this film with Reese Witherspoon. So I'm not proud of that, but it is what it is. I throw myself on the mercy of the court, just a man with an OCD problem and a too-large DVD collection.
THE PLOT: An uptight and by-the-book cop tries to protect the widow of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by crooked cops and murderous gunmen.
AFTER: This is straight out of "Midnight Run", which also had a cop (OK, an ex-cop) who had to get a criminally-tangential person from point A to point B so they could testify, while avoiding obstacles and various unsavory characters, and overcoming their vast personality differences. It's an obvious formula that's usually ripe for comedy. This one obviously put a few of its own spins on the formula - the main characters are women, and the cop is the uptight one, while the crook is the freewheeling one - but you can see "Midnight Run" as part of this film's DNA.
"Buddy" comedies rely on polar opposites working together, that itself goes back at least as far as "The Odd Couple", and before that there was Abbott & Costello and Laurel & Hardy, among others. But then the question becomes, how much bickering and disagreement between the two characters is too much? This film will probably answer that question for you.
But there were at least a couple laughs here for me, I suppose this could have been much worse. A lot of it is really by-the-numbers, like you just know that the cop will probably succeed in her duties, because it's so important to her, and she needs to be redeemed for the earlier incident that led to her working in the evidence room. I couldn't take the overblown accent of the other lead character, Danielle Riva, because it was so stressed it came off sounding like she was Charo.
Surprisingly few NITPICK POINTS tonight, except for wondering how someone couldn't notice a truck coming to smash into their car, when they weren't more than four feet away from it, or how a woman passed the police exam without being able to climb out of a window that was just a few feet off the ground. Seems like they would have covered that in training.
Also starring Sofia Vergara (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Matthew Del Negro (last seen in "Celeste & Jesse Forever"), Michael Mosley, John Carroll Lynch (last seen in "Ted 2"), Robert Kazinsky (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Richard T. Jones (last seen in "Concussion"), Benny Nieves (last seen in "City Hall"), Michael Ray Escamilla, Joaquin Cosio, Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), Mike Birbiglia (last seen in "Trainwreck"), Vincent Laresca, David Jensen, Marcus Lyle Brown (last seen in "The Big Short").
RATING: 4 out of 10 commandeered vehicles
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