12. “21 Jump Street” (2012)
The idea of mismatched buddy cops is now deeply ingrained in popular culture, and “21 Jump Street” writer/directors Chris Lord and Phil Miller make that apparent at every single moment with this cheeky meta re-imagining of the cult hit television show. Forced to work under a screaming boss (Ice Cube) who nonetheless seems to comment on his own short fuse and unreasonable expectations as genre tropes, young-ish police recruits Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are tasked with infiltrating a high school to bust a drug ring. But even as it revels in the cliches, the film never quite goes where you expect it to, the very game Tatum (who reinvented his career with this film) and Hill finding that high schoolers are very different to how they were just a few years earlier. Directed with verve, energy and wit by Lord and Miller, and lent more than a little heart by an excellent supporting turn by Brie Larson, it shouldn’t have worked, but really, really does (as too does its almost-as-good sequel).
11. “The Naked City” (1948)
For a film that most people probably haven’t seen, Jules Dassin’s “The Naked City” is almost endlessly influential — from “Law & Order” to Michael Mann, its DNA can be found in all kinds of U.S. police procedurals, being a popular early movie that brought a documentary-like realism to the genre. It’s also notable in being one of the first movies to center around a pair of cops: While it’s a world away from the kind of Shane Black action-comedies that the majority of this list includes, it’s nevertheless something of a landmark. Shot on location in New York (a rarity for the time, and one of the reasons the film won cinematography and editing Oscars), the film sees older homicide detective Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) teamed with a younger colleague, Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) to solve the murder of a young woman in New York. It’s pretty stripped down and fat-free, a procedural first and foremost, the only conflicts between its leads (who are actually separated for much of the film) coming from their differing levels of experience. But as the title suggests, Dassin is more interested in the landscape than the people, and as a portrait of the seedier side of post-war NYC (legendary crime photographer Weegee was a consultant on the film), it’s hard to beat.
10. “Stray Dog” (1949)
If “The Naked City” built the foundations for the buddy cop movie, Akira Kurosawa went and built a house on top them with the following year’s “Stray Dog.” Admittedly influenced by Dassin’s film (and French crime writer Georges Simenon), the film sees the director’s muse Toshiro Mifune play Murakami, a green homicide cop in post-war Tokyo whose gun is stolen, and who teams up with an older colleague, Satō (Takashi Shimura) to track down the thief, who’s graduated to murder with the stolen weapon. Hitting the genre beats more satisfyingly than Dassin’s film while retaining the same docu-drama grittiness, it also spends more time on developing the relationship between the two leads, and though they’re not mis-matched in the way that many films in the genre would play up, their friendship is well-sketched out and eventually even moving. But the film’s greatest value is in its portrait of post-war Tokyo, and the fate of ex-soldiers like Murakami and his target: The we’re-not-so-different-you-and-I trope is played out now, but it brings real pathos to both hero and villain here. Pair with Kurosawa’s other great policier, “High & Low,” for a fascinating contrast of how much an environment a city can change in less than 15 years.
9. “The Killer/Hard Boiled” (1989/1992)
Is there an action director in the history of the medium more operatic than John Woo? Michael Mann comes close, but even Mann’s most grandiose films sustain the director’s trademark mood of steely, poker-faced seriousness at all times. Woo, however, isn’t afraid to get silly: The man knows just how cathartic a good laugh can be in the middle of a car chase or a shootout (and obviously ditto for a perfectly placed flock of white doves). “The Killer” — about an assassin who must pull off one last job, aided by a local cop (that old chestnut) to pay for the surgery of a nightclub singer whom he blinds during a gunfight — might just be Woo’s finest hour. It contains some of the director’s most impressionistic action sequences and has gone on to influence everything from the Wu-Tang Clan (particularly Raekwon’s solo debut, “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…”) to Gareth Evans’ “Raid” movies. “Hard Boiled” is another loopy, violent bullet opera from Woo’s early Hong Kong years, one that focuses on another metaphorically loaded cops-‘n’-crooks dynamic as the one between Chow Yun-Fat and Danny Lee in that earlier film. It also contains what is perhaps the most batshit-insane action sequence ever filmed inside a hospital, so there’s that too.
8. “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984)
It’s funny how so many buddy cop movies began life with a very different tone. “Beverly Hills Cop” was initially meant to serve as a serious franchise for star Sylvester Stallone. But instead, Eddie Murphy got the gig, and was able to shape what was left to his specific skill set. While “Beverly Hills Cop” is now considered more of a starring vehicle for the ascendant comedian, one shouldn’t forget that the original, at least, was a buddy movie in many respects, with Axel Foley’s (Murphy) relationship with cops played by Judge Reinhold and John Ashton proving to be the central one in the film, and the later films grow less appealing the more it tried to become a showcase for its headliner. That said, no role Murphy ever had fit him better than this one, and his fast-talking, often outrageous hero pulls a sometimes thinly plotted tale along by the bootstraps, while director Martin Brest manages to perfectly juggle the tone and ensure a real sense of stakes is involved. The film was a hit of almost unfathomable proportions (it was number one for 14 weeks: only “Titanic” managed to stay on the top spot for longer), and for the most part, rightly so.
7. “In The Heat Of The Night” (1967)
The buddy cop movie isn’t exactly a traditionally critically lauded genre, but one film, an early example of the genre, did manage to win the Best Picture Oscar. As detailed in Mark Harris’ great book “Scenes From A Revolution,” Norman Jewison’s “In The Heat Of The Night” was victorious in part because of the politics of the time, and in part because it was something of a compromise choice between Old Hollywood (as represented by fellow nominees “Doctor Dolittle” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”) and New (“Bonnie & Clyde” and “The Graduate”), but the film’s still a rousing and rock-solid procedural drama that deserves a little place in film history. Based on John Ball’s novel, the film sees racist Mississippi police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) reluctantly paired with black Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier). It seems almost quaint now, but the film broke new ground both in a realistic portrait of the racist South, and in letting Poitier put a sharper edge on his often placid persona, striking a real chord with audiences. If it doesn’t quite grip as a thriller, it certainly absorbs and engages in its drama, and the eventual friendship between its two leads feels earned, if a little too neat. Plus it’s terrifically crafted, thanks to Jewison’s DoP Haskell Wexler and editor Hal Ashby.