A Couple of Dicks/Cop Out Script Review

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in "Cop Out"

Recently the trailer was released for the new Kevin Smith movie, “Cop Out” – the first movie he’s directed from a script that he didn’t write himself. The script was the heavily lauded Black List 2008 script, “A Couple of Dicks” by brothers Mark and Robb Cullen. The two writers are veterans of television, such shows as “Las Vegas” and “Heist”. “A Couple of Dicks” appears to be their quirky homage to the buddy cop comedies like “Lethal Weapon” that dominated the late ’80s and early ’90s.  Is it as a good as those movies? Yes and no.

The movie follows two bickering police partners – Jimmy, the level-headed leader (Bruce Willis) and his neurotic partner Paul (Tracy Morgan) – who go on the case in contemporary LA to find Jimmy’s stolen vintage baseball card which he was planning to use to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Along the way, they tangle with Mexican gang violence and uncover a kidnapping that puts them in danger.

The script is more than an homage to the buddy cop genre, it firmly plants itself in it. As a comedy, it has a few laugh-out-loud moments, but for the most part, the script plays everything pretty straight. This was disappointing to me as a reader, because I was hoping that Paul’s character would show some of the absurdity that has elevated Tracy Morgan to legend status on “30 Rock”. As comedies go, it’s a pretty mainstream, average one.

The storyline is a bit better than the comedic dialogue, and surprising moves pretty quickly. The action scenes should be fact-paced and exciting on the big screen and were the high-points of the script. The biggest problem with the script were two plot points that seemed out of left field and soured the story for me as the reader. One involves the sudden death of a character that I really liked in the story (I won’t say who it is, but it isn’t one of the two main characters), and secondly the crux of the entire plot. The script doesn’t really wrap up that nicely and if it makes it into the movie, I predict that the audience will feel a bit cheated. Again, no spoilers, but it seems like the entire film is thrown out the window in the last ten pages.

That said, the relationship between Paul and Jimmy is really the strength of this movie, and with Willis and Morgan in the roles, I can see them making this movie working. I don’t expect Smith to have much influence over this movie, if the trailer is to be believed (it follows the script completely), he is merely the studio’s hired gun. All in all, a pretty strong feature debut for the Cullen brothers, and I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Status: Currently in Postproduction under director Kevin Smith and starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Set to be released February 26, 2010. The title has been changed by the studio from “A Couple of Dicks” to “Cop Out” and the setting has been changed from Los Angeles to New York City.

Final Score (6.5 out of 10)