1982 - 48 HOURS, a buddy cop film

 A big financially successful film for Paramount and director/co-writer Walter Hill.  Also, probably one of the more impersonal films that this director has made. Since there are no original plots anymore, 48 Hours is the old opposite personalities forced to be partners.  Eventually they  begin to show a grudging respect for each other as the story progresses etc.  In this case Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy are a respectively a cop and a con man who team up to find a bad guy running around shooting people.

This was the breakout film for Eddie Murphy and propelled him to the top of the heap until has career crashed with Beverly Hills Cop III.  Still for much of the 198o's he was big stuff as a movie star.  Nick Nolte had been working in film for a while until he kind of crashed and burned with a variety of personal issues.  Third billed Annette O'Toole a very good actor got stuck with the part of the sexy girlfriend who's kind of a bitch, she's probably in about 3 or 4 scenes.

 

This is a very macho piece of film.  Women are relegated to running around topless and playing prostitutes. The guys all run around talking really tough.  It's very much a boy's club in this film which really dates it.  In some ways the attitudes in the film are even more out of it than a 1940's crime drama.

 

48 Hours did give Walter Hill commercial respect for a while but this is really not one of his more interesting films.  However no one could stage a gun fight or a fist fight like Hill probably the chief reason to even watch this film.

The film had a lot of writers,  Roger Spottiswoode, Walter Hill, Larry Gross and  Steven E. de Souza all professionals at writing this kind of Hollywood action stuff.  The running time is 96 minues.