From Lethal Weapon to Hot Fuzz, everyone loves a good “buddy cop” movie. It offers ample opportunities for action and humor — two things modern moviegoers love — and also provides a showcase for well-matched actors with terrific on-screen chemistry. But these stories don’t always necessarily revolve around two cops working on a case.
Sometimes, the characters are from a different branch of law enforcement (sometimes a fictional one, like MIB), or they could be a private eye, or a cop is paired up with a civilian and forced to investigate a case with someone who isn’t qualified. In Midnight Run, the “buddies” are a bounty hunter and a mob accountant.
Midnight Run (1988)
Despite being one of the most renowned buddy cop movies of all time, Midnight Run doesn’t have any cops as major characters. It’s about a bounty hunter trying to bring in a mob accountant. Dodging gangsters, corrupt feds, and rival bounty hunters along the way, Midnight Run is basically Planes, Trains & Automobiles with guns.
Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin’s electric on-screen chemistry anchors the movie, with the latter bringing his signature zany antics to the table and the former acting as a hysterical straight man.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017)
Ryan Reynolds plays a protection agent who’s hired to look after one of the most dangerous assassins in the world, played by Samuel L. Jackson, in The Hitman’s Bodyguard.
The script, originally written as a straight action movie before being hastily retooled as a comedy, is pretty weak, but Reynolds and Jackson’s chemistry more than makes up for it.
Let’s Be Cops (2014)
New Girl co-stars Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake Johnson re-team in Let’s Be Cops as two guys who dress up as police officers for a college reunion costume party and decide to impersonate cops full-time after being mistaken for real officers and receiving more respect than they’ve ever gotten in their lives.
They buy a used police cruiser and patrol the streets. Of course, the scam gets out of hand when they attract the attention of the real cops and an Albanian gang.
Last Action Hero (1993)
Technically, Jack Slater is a cop, but he’s a fictional one. Although it bombed at the box office, Last Action Hero has since been venerated as a cult classic. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a delight for fans of meta-ness.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as fictional big-screen detective Jack Slater and Austin O’Brien co-stars as a kid who’s magically transported into the world of the Jack Slater movie franchise.
The Rock (1996)
One of the early gems from Michael Bay’s career, The Rock revolves around a terrorist’s threat to release a biological weapon into San Francisco from Alcatraz Island.
It stars Nicolas Cage as the FBI’s leading chemical weapons expert and Sean Connery as an SAS captain and the only inmate to ever escape from Alcatraz.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
After Shane Black created the blueprint for buddy cop movies with his script for Lethal Weapon, he brought a buddy cop dynamic to his directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
The movie is primarily a deconstruction of the film noir, but it has a delightful on-screen pairing in Val Kilmer as a blunt PI named Gay Perry and a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. as a petty thief turned actor named Harry who reluctantly assists with his latest case.
Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
After a large chunk of Furious 7’s second act was dedicated to giving their spin-off a backdoor pilot, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham’s fan-favorite Fast & Furious characters were paired up in Hobbs & Shaw, helmed by Atomic Blonde’s David Leitch.
The movie mostly coasts from set piece to set piece on Johnson and Statham’s repartee, but that’s enough to keep it wildly entertaining from start to finish.
Men In Black (1997)
In many ways, Men in Black is a traditional buddy cop movie. It sees a stuffy old veteran being paired with a naive rookie. Over the course of the movie, they become best friends as they fight bad guys and save lives.
But the twist is that the law enforcement branch that the characters work for is dedicated to keeping Earth safe from aliens. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are perfectly matched in the lead roles.
Point Break (1991)
In Point Break, the buddy pairing is between an FBI agent and the perp he’s supposed to bring in. Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Utah, an FBI rookie who’s sent undercover into a gang of surfers who rob banks on the side, and Patrick Swayze plays Bodhi, the leader of the bank-robbing surfer gang.
Utah grows so close to Bodhi that he can’t bring himself to turn him in. This dynamic wouldn’t work nearly as well without Reeves and Swayze’s palpable on-screen bond.
The Nice Guys (2016)
After bringing the timeless pairing of Harry Lockhart and Gay Perry to the screen in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Shane Black created the timeless pairing of Holland March and Jackson Healy for The Nice Guys. This time, the duo is made up of two private eyes. Healy is much more competent than March but is shocked to discover that March is making more money than him in the same line of work.
They put their differences aside and decide to work together on a case that draws them into the adult film industry. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe shared incredible chemistry in this movie. It should’ve launched an R-rated franchise, but sadly got buried at the box office by Captain America: Civil War.