48 Hours (1982)
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 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 a
horny, wisecracking convict, temporarily released from San
Quentin, who teams up with the cop as his reluctant partner
because Nolte thinks Murphy knows how to find the killers.
The authorities give this odd couple forty-eight hours to find
the hoods before Murphy 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.
Nolte learns something about the underworld he's been fighting
from his association with the black convict; Murphy 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 Murphy 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).
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