Tightrope (1984)

Of course it is hard for New Orleans police detective Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) to catch the serial killer on the loose in the city - he is one of those badly drawn 80s-movie serial killers with an everchanging modus operandi, neither disorganised nor organised, at times a random targetter of women on the streets and at other times a player of diabolical games of cat-and-mouse who ends up a balaclava-ed home invader - and it is the macho 80s, so every single woman in this movie is coquettish and aching for it, and it doesn't matter how crotchetty and old and wrinkled the men are or how revolting their come-on lines are, the women are desperate to please - wait to hear Block's attempts at wooing the rape prevention instructor, Beryl Thibodeaux (the only woman in it who isn't a street walker) when they lunch together by the New Orleans' harbour, and wait and baulk when she becomes interested! - and keep in mind Block knows by this stage a serial killer is targeting the women he beds, but I guess Thibodeaux wants it so bad, Block simply has no choice, despite the obvious danger, to scratch her itch like a hero.

★★★☆☆

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The Night of the Twelfth (2022)

It isn't very remarkable at the outset and could be an episode of any grey and dour television police procedural - a young woman dies horribly, and police look for the killer amongst her male friends - but The Night of the Twelfth starts with a placecard that connects the story to true crimes in France and has said something loudly by the end, rather than settling for the usual murder mystery denouement.

★★★★☆

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The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949)

There's a chase across the rooftops of Paris and a hair-raising scene in the high-up girders of the Eiffel Tower but not much else of interest in this 1949 Simenon book adaptation that has Charles Laughton's Maigret and the Paris police mostly just waiting and watching as the suspects in a murder investigation run around in circles.

★★★☆☆

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It Happened In Broad Daylight (Es geschah am hellichten Tag) (1958)

The book, adapted by Sean Penn in The Pledge (2001) with Jack Nicholson as the detective who promises a grieving mother he'll catch her child's killer, came later, but this 1958 Swiss-Italian-Spanish co-production is based Friedrich Dürrenmatt's even earlier screenplay - not the book - featuring the chilling child serial killer plot with a more palatable ending - the book's subtitle (The Pledge - Requiem for the Detective Novel) hints at the dark direction Dürrenmatt took with his refashioned plot, while this film, faithful to the earlier screenplay, can be enjoyed as a detective novel proper: a jaunty Swiss mystery with a thrilling police investigation.

★★★★☆

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Patriots Day (2016)

This moment-by-moment account of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is a moving tribute to the city, its first responders and citizens injured or killed in the two explosions, and coming so soon after events, is naturally not a movie interested in turning the camera away from the victims and heroes to explore more deeply the genesis of the crime or the backgrounds, rationales or personalities of the perpertrators, their relationship to each other, with their families or to Islam.

★★★☆☆

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Turner and Hooch (1989)

Turner and Hooch is essentially a buddy cop movie except that one of the buddy cops is whiny, dopey, incessantly barks, and has an irritating schtick - he teams up with a drooling Dogue de Bordeaux to solve a not very interesting crime and of course the mismatched pair grow to love each other despite their initial differences.

★★☆☆☆

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Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

As a kid, I was mad about this buddy cop sequel to Lethal Weapon that reunites Riggs and Murtaugh on a case investigating a rascist drug-dealing South African diplomat, but now, watching it again, the extent of its success beggars belief with nothing in it even closely resembling real police work and while the zippy story offers plenty of humour and tension between the cop duo and the bad guy, it is otherwise about as complex as a two-hour fistfight.

★★★☆☆

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Lethal Weapon (1987)

One interesting thing about this buddy cop action movie is the nostalgic image of its young, lithe and mulleted star, Mel Gibson - he plays cop-with-a-death-wish Riggs who partners with police officer and grounded family man Murtaugh (Danny Glover) to break a drug-smuggling ring - but the most interesting thing is how popular an action flick this was, spawning three sequels despite essentially being a protracted fist fight - largely plot-free, shallow, ridiculously macho, devoid of any creative flourishes and completely free of special effects.

★★★☆☆

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Stray Dog (野良犬) (1949)

A rookie cop in post-war Japan seeks to recover his stolen colt pistol and ends up involved in a manhunt for a murderer in this Akira Kurosawa police-procedural noir classic - said by some to be the first buddy cop movie - a richly detailed depiction of daily Japanese life but also revealing of the extent of Japanese society's code of individual responsibility, suggesting that when responsibility is left to slip, stray dogs turn rabid.

★★★★★

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The Golden Child (1986)

Following his success in 1985's Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy loaned his signature laugh to this hugely-popular-at-the-time 1986 fantasy cop drama, pretty much "LA Chinatown Cop" with Axel Foley (here called Chandler Jarrell), a man tasked with protecting a Tibetan "golden child" from a supernatural villain; apart from an unexpected claymation scene and some magic effects, it is fairly humdrum to watch today.

★★☆☆☆

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Tango and Cash (1989)

Rascist (at one stage, Kurt Russell's Cash impatiently screams at a Chinese man to speak English) and sexist (sisters need chaperoning, and an on-duty policeman asks two women on the street for a threeway), but somehow this vacuous 80s buddy cop story is tolerable - nostalgia for children of the 80s like me and a means of marvelling at how much more politically correct the world now is.

★★☆☆☆

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The Calling (2014)

Susan Sarandon plays Frances McDormand in a Fargo-style police procedural complete with cops out of their depth in a snowladen backwater, but the Fargo quirkiness which is interesting gives way to a leaden serial killer plot with an especially daft final scene.

★★☆☆☆

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Edge of Darkness (2010)

A policeman's daughter is killed and he investigates, learning of her secret life and involving himself in a nasty corporate intrigue, in this slight thriller given an unwarranted, sprawling, epic Heat-like treatment.

★★☆☆☆

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SP: The Motion Picture (2010)

This glossy Japanese production about operatives protecting VIPs is let down by repetitive action sequences and the fact I don't speak Japanese, am not familiar with the popular Japanese TV drama the movie is based on, and couldn't properly understand the intuitive abilities and relationships of the main character.

★★☆☆☆

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Memories of Murder (살인의 추억) (2003)

Only South Korea's Bong Joon-ho could produce from such grim true-life serial killer events this terrifically heady mix of human absurdist farce, police procedural thrills, mystery, and tragicomedy.

★★★★★

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Prisoners (2013)

Elaborately detailed, harrowing child abduction thriller with points of difference that rise it above other thrillers of its kind, but like another of Denis Villeneuve's movies, Incendies, this one, once it is over, leaves you wondering about the purpose of such a grandly staged but grim little world.

★★★☆☆

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