BULLETPROOF
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Damon Wayans, Adam Sandler, James Caan, James Farentino, Kristen Wilson. Screenplay: Joe Gayton, Lewis Colick. Director: Ernest Dickerson. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
All right, let's dispense with the preliminaries first: Yes, BULLETPROOF recycles material which has been done before -- and done better -- in MIDNIGHT RUN and 48 HRS., among others. Yes, it is the kind of movie which has been a thorn in the paw of everyone who has dreamed of a day when Hollywood values an original idea. And yes, it includes the kind of sexist and homophobic bits which have been all too characteristic of films of its kind, targeted at the whooping goons of the movie-going world like the one sitting next to me at this film. All these things are true, yet they are not exactly the reason why BULLETPROOF comes up short. You see, BULLETPROOF is frequently quite funny, and it irritated me that I was unable to enjoy the laughs as much as I should have.
BULLETPROOF begins with partners in crime Rock Keats (Damon Wayans) and Archie Moses (Adam Sandler) stealing a car, just one of many they have stolen in the previous year. They are best friends, with one small hitch: "Keats" is actually an undercover police officer named Jack Carter, who has befriended Archie in order to get inside the operation of drug lord Frank Colton (James Caan), for whom Archie is a courier. During the bust in which Jack's cover is blown, Archie inadvertently shoots him in the head, but somehow Jack survives. Months of physical therapy later, Archie is back on the job, and his first assignment is not a pleasant one. Archie, captured in Arizona, has decided to turn state's evidence against Colton, with one provision: Jack has to be the man to bring him back to L.A. As though the company were not troublesome enough, Jack has to contend with the killers Colton has hired to take Archie out, and who seem to know his every move before he does.
It is somewhat ironic that Archie frequently chides Jack for seeing the world as "just black and white," since that is just one of many ways this film follows the pattern of 90% of "antagonistic buddy cop" movies. Just as a little test to check if you've ever seen a movie in this genre before, see if you can guess whether Archie and Jack are friends when BULLETPROOF ends. That's right, this film takes you where every film of its kind has taken you before, on a bickering ride to an inevitable conclusion, and it is abundantly clear that writers Joe Gayton and Lewis Colick are aware of that fact as well. At only 85 minutes, BULLETPROOF still feels long, because there is nothing of any consequence happening, nothing to build momentum towards a resolution. There is a recipe for a film of this kind, and Gayton and Lewis follow it, and we are simply watching them follow it. The experience is like watching an hour and a half long cooking show in which the final result is a bowl of cereal.
I wish it had been easier to dismiss BULLETPROOF given all those problems, but the fact is that it is also quite often funny. Adam Sandler, who turns in his least annoying screen performance to date (and if that isn't damning with faint praise, I don't know what is), gets most of the prime lines, taunting Jack and wise-cracking about the porno films on the motel television where the two spend the night. When Sandler isn't trying to play a goofy character, he can deliver a line with a casual zing, and when he isn't screaming he can be funny. The problem is that the story requires Archie to be hurt and angry at Jack's betrayal, and that manifests itself in a performing style which can best be described as "volume equals emotion." Of course, it might also be true that screaming is just Sandler's way of keeping a straight face; if you've ever seen Sandler perform live, you know that he finds himself hilarious, and when he is trying to "act" in BULLETPROOF it always seems that he is trying not to snicker.
Damon Wayans isn't much better as a thespian, and he is placed in the uncomfortable role of straight man. He does get a few brutal put-downs, but most of the time he is simply playing put-upon, and it doesn't suit him. Except for the first fifteen minutes, when he is still in his undercover role and allowed to be loose, Wayans moves as though the only way to be serious is to clench every muscle in his body and speak very slowly. When he and Sandler are allowed to go toe-to-toe, the confrontations are enjoyable, but they are interrupted regularly by tedious and obligatory action sequences. The result is a strange inversion of the formula which made TWISTER so frustrating: I wanted to be around for the scenes when Wayans and Sandler were trading jibes, but I was ready to head to the lobby as soon as the gunfire started. It is clear that both Wayans and Sandler -- and the audience -- would have enjoyed 90 minutes of their stand-up routines more than this routine of a somewhat different kind. For all its humor, the real joke in BULLETPROOF is on anyone who expected it to be more than this month's variation on a theme.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 bullets in the head: 5.
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