By Robert Scucci
| Published
For me, Eddie Murphy is one of those hit-or-miss actors, but when he hits, he’s an absolute force of nature. I’m willing to forget about Norbit (2007) because Bowfinger (1999) is such a perfectly executed satire, and I’m willing to forget about The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) because we have 1982’s 48 Hrs., his feature film debut, which is now streaming in all of its buddy cop glory on Netflix.
If you long for the days when two mismatched men get together to fight crime despite conflicting motives and personalities, all while the captain chews out our heroes for following nobody’s rules but their own because the mayor’s going to have his butt in a vice grip, 48 Hrs. delivers this in spades. Sure, you can tell yourself that Deadpool & Wolverine is the perfect modern analog to the buddy cop film, and you wouldn’t even be lying to yourself, but sometimes you need to jump back a few decades to see how it’s really done.
After all, 48 Hrs. is considered by many to be the OG, and became the template for the modern buddy cop comedy as we know and love it.
The Unlikeliest Of Partners
48 Hrs. wastes no time showing us just how much of a badass San Francisco Police Inspector Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) is. When he wakes up, the first thing he does is pour whiskey into his coffee right before arguing with his girlfriend, Elaine (Annette O’Toole). These two behavioral quirks are obviously problematic, but they tell you everything you need to know about his character. Namely, he’s so devoted to and traumatized by his job that he neglects any semblance of a home life while simultaneously drinking himself into an early grave.
When Jack is tasked with hunting down escaped murderer Albert Ganz (James Remar) and his accomplice, Billy Bear (Sonny Landham), he makes an extreme decision that could land him in a whole heap of trouble. Going against SFPD protocol, Jack thinks it’s in everybody’s best interest to work with Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), a former member of Ganz’s gang who only has six months left on his three-year sentence before he becomes a free man. Jack signs a 48-hour release to get Reggie back on the streets and figures he’ll deal with the consequences later.
As you would expect from an early ‘80s buddy cop flick, the main source of tension comes from the fact that Jack is a white cop and Reggie is a Black criminal. Most of the humor and tension comes not only from their racial differences, but from the fact that they’re both incredibly hard-headed individuals who insist on doing things their own way. The agreement is simple: if Reggie helps locate Ganz and put him behind bars once and for all, he wants his sentence dropped so he can walk free.
It doesn’t take long for the two men to come to blows in 48 Hrs., but again, since we’re talking about a buddy cop flick, it also doesn’t take long for Jack and Reggie to realize they’re not so different after all. Jack, while technically a man of the law, doesn’t exactly do things by the book, which always results in him getting thoroughly chewed out by Captain Haden (Frank McRae). Reggie is obviously behind bars because of his criminal activities, but he’s much smarter than he initially lets on, and his street smarts, compounded by his willingness to go all in while helping Jack track down Ganz, prove invaluable to his de facto partner.
Some Will Say This Didn’t Age Well
Again, like most R-rated buddy cop films from the early ‘80s, there will be some people who tell you the film “aged like milk” or is problematic. While it’s easy to say that in 2026, it’s also easy to forget that this film was a product of its time. Racial epithets and other unwholesome phrases are tossed around casually and frequently, but you’re lying to yourself if you think people didn’t talk like this to some extent in the early ‘80s, especially under these kinds of extenuating circumstances. On the flip side, it’s a good benchmark to see how far we’ve come as a society when it comes to how we treat each other, making it historically significant.
It’s also worth noting that 48 Hrs. is a surprisingly subversive film, and the reason its buddy cop dynamic works so well is because Jack and Reggie absolutely hate each other when they first meet. It’s a deep, systemic hatred that’s supposed to make them mortal enemies. They need to clash hard before broing out, and the initial animosity they have for each other only means that when they start getting along, the payoff feels earned.
When they finally start clicking with each other, that dynamic becomes essential because both men continually impress each other when they’re not beating the hell out of each other. If you’re tuning in to watch Eddie Murphy chew the scenery like an absolute master when he’s fully in his element, you just have to wait for the redneck dive bar scene, where he borrows Jack’s badge and absolutely schools a room full of Confederate-flag-waving, card-carrying racists. They’re left speechless by how brazenly he commands a situation that could have ended horribly if he wasn’t 100 percent confident things would go his way.
That dynamic, playing off Nick Nolte’s “swig from flask and ask questions later” style of operating, makes for a legendary pairing that I can’t confidently say has been replicated at such a high level since. Head on over to Rotten Tomatoes for confirmation if you need it, but buddy cop comedies don’t land 92 percent critical scores by accident (or on purpose, for that matter). Everything else feels like a cheap imitation, and rightfully so. While there were earlier precursors like 1949’s Stray Dog and 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, 48 Hrs. cemented itself in movie history as the modern template for this kind of film, making it not only one of the first of its kind, but also one of the best.
As of this writing, 48 Hrs. is streaming on Netflix.
