Review: Let's Be Cops

Let's Be Cops
Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. Luke Greenfield




Okay, here's the film… Loser flatmates / Fancy-dress with inexplicably genuine police uniforms / Bad gangster men / Comedic abuse of power / Buy police car off Ebay, explained in exactly the same amount of detail as in trailer / Authority not even questioned by actual police / Ladies like police though, yes? / Staking out gangsters with 10yr old boy in tow for some reason / Ladies like police, Yes! / FIGHTING! / Follow your heart, man / Hah, solved case and not even police! / OH NOES! POLICE MAN BAD! / Rescue friend! / SHOOTING! / I love you, man / SHOOTING! / No-one dead: smiles.
Top-and-tail with Backstreet Boys (audio).

I wanted to enjoy this, that's the sad part. Sure, the trailer's ropey, but it looks like the film could at least be a bit fun when it lets go, right? Sadly, 'Let's Be Cops' is like a laboured Mark Wahlberg / Kevin Hart buddy-cop vehicle which has been inexplicably turned down by both performers, had its plot outline translated into a foreign language with BabelFish and then back again by the same device, ran through an algorithm to deaden the timing of all sight-gags, and had the subplots edited in by someone who hasn't read the script. And then a black guy does a slightly racist 'Chinese' impersonation but says that it's slightly racist which makes it not racist, somehow. Oh, and they become friends with the rasta/crusty/yardie man they comedically waterboard, so that's not offensive, either. For once, the Eastern European Gangsters™ are actually underplayed by comparison.

Strangely, the only actor who escapes relatively lightly is actual thesp James D'Arcy, and that's only because he's playing his slimy-gangster part straight as if he was starring in Die Hard 6.
A Bruce Willis adversary is the only decent thing about this film.

It's got a few laughs, but there are more misses than hits, here. Like a computer-generated first-draft of every substandard buddy-cop film you've seen over the last ten years, Let's Be Cops is even mediocre at being properly crap.

The trailer is funnier than the film. Which should tell you all you need to know.



Nope.



No, it falls short even by its own lax standards.



If anything, telly. But you can die without having ticked this one off your list, really.



Nah. Can't be arsed.



I shouldn't imagine so.



Not that I heard.

Why has this been released in August? This is a March/October, graveyard-slot, type film.

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