Bulletproof (1996)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Load of rubbish!!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The soured friendship between a former undercover cop and a car thief he befriended causes tension when the cop has to escort his old buddy across the country in this action comedy starring Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler. Bits and pieces of the plot are predictable with some twists heavily foreshadowed, but a sufficient supply of quirky moments ensures that 'Bulletproof' never once bores. The supporting cast is colourful with James Caan making a cunning villain and Jeep Swenson memorable as his body builder henchman, though the supporting player who gets the best moments is an uncredited dog, especially funny in the final scene. The highlight here though comes around halfway in as Wayans and Sandler spend the night at an outskirts motel. Mark Roberts is hilarious as the proprietor who does not know whether to take Sandler's verbal sexual innuendo seriously; his facial expression when he sees Sandler at a window is priceless. He also becomes embroiled in the film's single best chase sequence. The action is, however, good throughout with impressive stunts at the mansion near the end and some perfectly disorienting spiral staircase shots. The comedy does not always work, with Sandler's commentary while watching an adult movie simply lame, but the film more often than not has a laugh a minute ratio. Add into the mix some nice messages about friendship and the difficulties of separating oneself emotionally when deep undercover and 'Bulletproof' quickly proves that it is more than just the '48 Hrs.' clone some unfairly cite it as being.

Watching the new disposable Ernest Dickerson action-comedy "Bulletproof," a cops and robbers buddy picture with Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler as the buds, is like munching great junk food. You know it isn't what you should be eating. Nevertheless, it smells delicious and makes you smack your lips together when you chew. The action scenes, when the bad guys (sometimes even the good guys) get the cream puffs kicked out of them, contain a lot of crunch. The crude-oil "Saturday Night Live" comic scenes, which only anal retentive Neanderthals would savor as instructive, are uproariously self-effacing. Serious film genre scholars may give an appreciative nod to "Bulletproof" simply because it triggers happier memories from classic action pictures, such as Clint Eastwood's "The Gauntlet" (1977), Sam Peckinpah's "The Killer Elite" (1974), and the 1958 Tony Curtis & Sidney Poitier version of "The Defiant Ones." Nobody but the average moviegoers who really knows the two perquisite words in movie-going—fun and fake—will truly appreciate this potboiler of a melodrama, with comedy tosses in a spice, for what it aspires to be.The corpses pile up as fast as the clichés in the derivative Joe Gayton and Lewis Colick screenplay. As Detective Keats, Damon Wayans is cast as an undercover cop who convinces Moses (Adam Sandler's dopey but likable criminal blunder brain) that he is his best friend. The trouble begins when Keats bonds a little too well with Moses. Keats feels personally committed to bringing Moses in alive and well. When they try to reel in the kingpin mobster, a wealthy used car salesman played with gleeful abandon by James Caan of "The Godfather." Keats concerns himself more Moses' welfare than the bust. In a weird "Pulp Fiction" torque of events, Moses shoots Keats in the head but neither kills nor cripples him.Moses freaks out, leaves for Mexico, with his pooch (one of those magpie-looking Spuds McKenzie types) to become a bullfighter. The law catches up with Moses, and he agrees to testify against his boss (James Caan) on the condition that Keats serve as his bodyguard. Although Damon Wayans is a truly gifted comic, he could take lessons from his brother Keenen Ivory about playing beefy, tough-guys. Damon acts more like his "Major Payne" character here when he should have used his rugged quarterback hero from "The Last Boy Scout." He is a cheese cake action hero here. But it is fun to watch the antics of Wayans and Sandler (a foul-mouthed, 1950s' era Jerry Lewis wannabe) as they blunder through a series of impossible obstacles. The filmmakers serve up seemingly non-stop action like a Saturday Morning television cartoon. They plunge our bulletproof heroes into several unreal but really predictable predicaments. Eventually, the action brings our buddies to the big shoot'em up in James Caan's palatial residence and at least one surprise. If you figure out that surprise before the Dickerson and company reveal it, you have obviously gone into the wrong theater."Juice" director Dickerson got his start as a cinematographer for Spike Lee in epics such as "Do The Right Thing," makes "Bulletproof" look more visually slick and sophisticate than it deserves to be considering how imitative it remains. Each shot contains imaginative compositional elements that you won't be able to savor on a small screen. The lighting is extremely well-done. Actor James Farentino, who plays Wayan's sinister police department superior, is lighted so evocatively that he appears suspicious.Dickerson's big problem here is that the headlong action must break intermittently at all comedy stops. "Bulletproof" employs comedy to insulate its audiences from the effect of thinking too much about the wildly improbable scenes of simulated violence that recur throughout the film. After somebody gets iced, a joke is delivered to make you forget that they've been killed or, in the case of our heroes, escaped certain death.James Caan indulges himself as the used car salesman drug lord. In one scene, he removes his toupee so it won't get dirty during a showdown with Wayans. Caan gives his villainy the appropriate inflection for the kind of hokum that pads out "Bulletproof." He is nowhere near the bastard that he was in the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller "Eraser." The usual quota of souped-up car chases, gunfights, and four-letter oaths ought to delight hardcore action fans, but they may miss the more amorous matings that occur in the more dramatic male sagas. Composer Elmer Bernstein enhances the super-charged action scenes with some humming, hipster-cool incidental music, especially in the introductory urban car chase scene. "Bulletproof" is definitely no classic, but it has its share of entertaining moments.

This is interesting case. The thrillers with 2 totally discordant partners are quite familiar since the start of the 1980s. The formula got (Lethal Weapon) in 1987, then the sequel in 1989, where the sense of comedy was so lucid, as semi-iconic example for the buddy movie which was all over the place during that era.Once we've had 2 actors whom can do comedy (Lethal Weapon), one actor and one comedian (48 Hours), one actor to be comic and one comedian to act (Midnight Run), or 2 comedians yet into comedy (Dragnet). Here, despite how poor the atmosphere was, the main problem remains in casting strangely 2 "comic" tiny stars, at the time, to be the lead of what supposed to be a thriller. And the personality of the movie went wrong since that. You can't settle.. Is that a slapstick comedy, or a violent thriller ?? I was really sad because of the potentials of this hot plot, they're totally wasted.Despite the efforts (Damon Waynes) with the beard made to look serious but sorry that was in the wrong place, he was mostly cool but everything wasn't. (Adam Sandler) looked tepid or slack and relied only on his funny charisma to do the whole thing for him. (James Cann) must've needed money hard, but not to wonder because after watching him in (Alien Nation - 1988) I became convinced that I can see him in anything ! At least he had not much to do. Furthermore, some slight provocative moments: (Waynes) and (Sandler) escape from the police station after threatening the whole department so dozens of policemen run after them, and THEN they're both enjoying their time in a strip club !!?? There is some excessive buffoonery also, to have that tense between being a comedy and a thriller. The direction is idealistically not cinematic, handling the mission like a TV episode, or a sitcom.. A boring serious one too. All the scenes suffered of zero budget so the word poor came with so many meanings here. Look at the deadly climax (shame to call it one in the first place) to know exactly what I mean. Basically there are better straight-to-video movies than this one ! (Kristen Wilson) was the only "pretty" thing in here yet as the plot's potentials both were lost.So it's the case of a thriller comedy which having the comedians as Action heroes, with destitute action, and even off-color comedy ! It is interesting indeed as a perfect type for a formula with a disorder. It could've been good though, but in another movie. Generally, I can be wrong to say that it wasn't entertaining, but I can be fair to say it was lowly entertaining.

I'm not a big fan of Adam Sandler and I normally don't appreciate all those buddy / action comedies. But I have to admit that this movie wasn't even the worst in the genre. Yes from time to time it can even be quite enjoyable. However, there's already a huge list of this kind of movies and "Bulletproof" certainly isn't the best of them either. Damon Wayans is an undercover cop who works with an unsuspecting criminal, played by Adam Sandler, to catch the big boss of a drug cartel. What happens next is a mix of a lot of action and some fun parts. The action sequences are nice to watch, but not every joke in this movie works very well. Still, in the end it isn't too bad, but like many action comedies, this one is very predictable and sometimes also very much over-the-top. I guess this movie will be loved most by the people who like the genre or by the great fans of Sandler's work. Since I don't belong to any of these two groups, I give it only a 5.5/10.