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Buddy cop is a film and television genre with plots involving two people of very different and conflicting personalities who are forced to work together to solve a crime or defeat criminals, often learning from each other in the process. The two are normally eitherpolice officers (cops) orsecret agents, but some films or TV series that are not about two officers may still be referred to asbuddy cop films/TV series. It is a subgenre ofbuddy films andcrime fiction. They can be eithercomedies oraction-thrillers.
Frequently, although not always, the two heroes are of different ethnicity or cultures. However, regardless of ethnicity, the central difference is normally that one is "wilder" than the other: a hot-temperediconoclast is paired with a more even-tempered partner. Often the "wilder" partner is the younger of the two, with the even-tempered partner having more patience and experience. These films sometimes also contain a variation on thegood cop/bad copmotif, in which one partner is kinder and law-abiding, while the other is a streetwise, "old school" police officer who tends to break (or at least bend) the rules. Another frequent plot device of this genre is placing one of the partners in an unfamiliar setting (like a different city or foreign country) or role (like requiring police field work of a non-cop, rookie, or office-bound "desk jockey"). In these cases, they are usually guided by the other partner.
In his review ofRush Hour,Roger Ebert coined the term "Wunza Movie" to describe this subgenre, a pun on the phrase "One's a..." that could be used to describe the contrasts between the two characters in a typical film.[1]
Thecliché was satirized in the filmLast Action Hero. While the movie in itself was a buddy cop film (i.e. pairing a fictional cop with a real world boy), the film's police department obligatorily assigned all cops a conflicting buddy to work with, even to the extreme of one officer being partnered with a cartoon cat.
A subgenre of the buddy cop film is thebuddy cop-dog movie, which teams a cop with adog, but uses the same element of unlikely partnership to create comedic hijinks, such asTurner & Hooch,Top Dog andK-9.
Akira Kurosawa's 1949 Japanese filmStray Dog, starringToshiro Mifune andTakashi Shimura, is considered a precursor to the buddy cop film genre.[2] Other early pioneers of the buddy cop film genre are the 1967 American filmIn the Heat of the Night and 1974'sFreebie and the Bean. The genre was later popularized by the 1982 film48 Hrs., starringEddie Murphy andNick Nolte, then also the 1984 filmBeverly Hills Cop along with its 1987 sequelBeverly Hills Cop II, all three are among the most successful buddy cop films. The genre was further popularized by the 1986 filmRunning Scared starringGregory Hines andBilly Crystal, the 1987 filmLethal Weapon starringMel Gibson andDanny Glover, and the 1989 filmTango & Cash starringSylvester Stallone andKurt Russell. The genre was revisited multiple times byLethal Weapon creatorShane Black, who went on to writeThe Last Boy Scout,Last Action Hero,Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, andThe Nice Guys, all of which play off the mismatched-partners (if not always specifically cops) theme.
In addition to being a masterful precursor to the buddy cop movies and police procedurals popular today, Stray Dog is also a complex genre film that examines the plight of soldiers returning home to post-war Japan.
