48 Hours is a Clint Eastwood movie without Clint Eastwood in it. Instead, it’s got Nick Nolte, looking puffy and out of shape, as Detective Jack Cates – a bedraggled, two-fisted cop on the trail of two mad-dog killers terrorising San Francisco.
So far, so bad. But 48 Hours also has Eddie Murphy as horny, wisecracking convict Reggie Hammond, temporarily released from San Quentin, who teams up with the racist cop as his reluctant partner because Jack thinks Reggie knows how to find the killers.
The authorities give this odd couple forty-eight hours to find the hoods before Hammond has to go back to the slammer. They hate each other, but they need each other – and hereby hangs what little tale there is.
Meanwhile, 48 Hours takes you on a sleazy, breezy tour of San Francisco, something you won’t get at American Express.
The action is relentless, with much fashionably filthy macho dialogue, a lot of electric energy, some rather nasty violence, a few typical women who get brutalised and left behind in tears, and some fast-paced smash-ups in the usual assortment of moving vehicles that are standard equipment for San Francisco cop movies.
Cates learns something about the underworld he’s been fighting from his association with the black convict; Reggie learns about the cop mentality he’s always hated by posing as one. Both get an insider’s point of view of an outsider’s world, and this is the irony we’re expected to marvel at.
Eddie Murphy manages to steal the whole movie in his film debut.
There’s a terrific scene in which Reggie takes on hostile redneck cowboys in a hillbilly bar and knocks heads together with the security of the cop’s badge for protection, that is a triumph of comic social revenge.
Detective Jack Cates
Nick Nolte Reggie Hammond
Eddie Murphy Albert Ganz
James Remar Billy Bear
Sonny Landham Elaine
Annette O’Toole Captain Haden
Frank Mcrae Luther David
Patrick Kelly Kehoe
Brion James Rosalie
Kerry Sherman Algren
Jonathan Banks Vanzant
James Keane Frizzy
Tara King Lisa
Greta Blackburn Casey
Margot Rose Sally
Denise Crosby Candy
Olivia M. Brown
Director
Walter Hill
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The authorities give this odd couple forty-eight hours to find the hoods before Hammond has to go back to the slammer. They hate each other, but they need each other – and hereby hangs what little tale there is.
