My World of Flops Case File #162 Bulletproof (1996)

Comedians and mismatched buddy cop comedies go together like by the book cops and mavericks who play by their own rules but get results. It’s easy to see why stand-up comedians, Saturday Night Live alum and funnymen of all stripes are fixtures of buddy cop comedies. Casting someone like Alan Arkin in Freebie and the Bean or Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop automatically brings the “comedy” to this ubiquitous breed of action-comedies. 

Live wires like the young Arkin or Murphy bring a manic comic energy to mismatched buddy cop comedies that enlivens the dead spots in between car chases and shoot-outs as well as dedicated fanbases and an innate flair for improvisation. A comedian in the right role can transform a dour police drama into a crackling, character-based comedy with laughs and thrills aplenty. 

The thoroughly underwhelming 1996 muddle Bulletproof believes so strongly in the casting of comedians in mismatched buddy cop comedies that it doubled its pleasure, if not the audience’s fun, by casting comedians in both roles, as the by-the-book lawman out to get his man and the kooky, smart-ass wildcard he’s reluctantly partnered with. 

For the role of an undercover cop out to bring down a drug-smuggling big macher played by Freebie and the Bean’s James Caan the filmmakers got Damon Wayans, whose history with mismatched buddy cop movie was already long and semi-distinguished. The Major Payne star made his feature film debut as “Banana Man” in Beverly Hills Cop, played a dramatic role in Dennis Hopper’s mismatched buddy cop drama Colors, then leveraged the intense heat and popularity of his breakout turn on In Living Color to snag a plum role co-headlining with Bruce Willis in Tony Scott’s Shane Black-written buddy cop comedy hit The Last Boy Scout. 

Wayans’ decades-long jaunt through the mismatched buddy cop comedy came full circle when he took on the role of Roger Murtaugh, the ultimate straight-shooting cop who has had enough of this shit, in the television adaptation of Lethal Weapon. 

Sandler’s relationship with buddy cop comedies is shorter and less auspicious. As a test balloon to determine whether audiences would embrace Sandler in a different kind of role and a different kind of movie, Bulletproof was an unmistakable failure. 

Bulletproof might not have been a total stiff at the box-office, and I’m sure it did just fine on home video and cable television, where standards and expectations are lower, and the audience generally much higher but it was a dog with critics and an ugly little outlier in Sandler’s early career. Director Ernest Dickerson’s failed attempt to create a race-switched 48 Hours for the 1990s represented a dead end for Sandler instead of a new beginning. 

Sandler’s sole foray into the world of mismatched buddy cop movies miscasts him as Archie Moses, a wisecracking thief who spends his days stealing from the rich and palling around and broing out with his best buddy Rock Keats (Damon Wayans). We know these two heterosexual gentlemen are VERY close because whenever Archie isn’t being a belligerent asshole for no discernible reason he’s telling his best friend that he loves him, and that he’s like a brother to him, and that he would gladly take a bullet for him.

It’s a good thing Archie goes on and on about what an amazing friendship and partnership he and his BFF enjoy or it would be easy to assume they were two men with zero chemistry and nothing in common.

Name a more iconic duo!

So you can only imagine how angry Archie is to find out that the man he can’t stop kvelling about as the world’s greatest mensch and a source of endless nachas is actually an undercover detective named Jack Carter who has only been pretending to be a crook and his friend to help bust Frank Colton (James Caan), a big time drug dealer laundering money through his car dealership. 

In a melee Archie ends up accidentally shooting his former best friend in the head before being taken into custody. In order to recover from being shot in the head, Jack undergoes several minutes of physical therapy with gorgeous physical therapist Dr. Traci Flynn (Kristen Wilson). 

Flynn is the only real female character in the film. Until the conclusion, Wilson has about five minutes of screen time; she’s here as the most arbitrary of arbitrary love interests and to be a damsel in distress but she ultimately serves another purpose in the proceedings as well: it turns out the only woman in the movie is actually a villain who only pretended to fall in love with Jack at her boss Frank Colton’s behest just as Jack only pretended to be Archie’s pal for crime-fighting reasons.  

Archie is set to testify against Caan’s crime boss and Jack is given the assignment of transporting Archie to the courtroom but things go predictably screwy and the two men end up on the run from corrupt FBI agents and cops out to exterminate the small time thief before he can cause big problems for his boss. 

Deep into their misadventures the two men find lodging for the night in a small town theme hotel that prides itself on its extensive collection of pornography. Sandler, in what sadly qualifies as his big comedy showcase, convinces the milquetoast Wally Cox type behind the counter to have a bisexual threesome with him and the man’s wife, who looks like him with a wig on. 

This, friends, is what Sandler was paid big bucks for: a gay panic-infused porno motel set-piece that stops the action cold for a good five minutes. These are the jokes, folks. It does not get any better.

Since he’s playing the straight man, Wayans graciously seems to have volunteered not to be the funny one; Sandler, in turn, graciously seems to have forfeited being the funny one as well out of deference to his costar. That leaves us with an action comedy with little in the way of comedy that also comes up dreadfully short in the action department as well.  

Bulletproof’s central conflict is predicated on Jack spending 14 months lying, manipulating and deceiving Archie into thinking he’s his best friend and eternal partner solely for the sake of arresting him and Archie SHOOTING HIM IN THE HEAD, resulting in a metal plate and a lifetime of trauma. 

These are, needless to say, exceedingly reasonable grievances. I know that if someone shot me in the head or spent well over a year pretending to be my best buddy and closest ally it would take me a LOT to get over it. 

A bullet in the head and over a year of the most intense, personal kind of betrayal are way too serious to be appropriate for a dumbass 80 minute long Adam Sandler comedy. This is not Douglas Sirk. Nor is it John Woo. Bulletproof doesn’t the substance or the ambition to handle even the arbitrary dramatic elements found in every mismatched buddy cop comedy, let alone that level of melodrama. 

Bulletproof never allows us to forget the very intense reasons Archie and Jack have gone from best buds to worst enemies because every time there is a lull in the action, they fill that space by yelling at one another about how legitimately angry they are about the whole bullet in the head/14 months of treachery thing.

Other lines and elements feel like relics of earlier, more action-oriented drafts of the screenplay as well, like when Jack tells Archie that he’s the only person he’s ever told that his father died of a heroin overdose with a needle in his arm with all of the pathos he might bring to asking a co-worker where he’d like to go for lunch.

The film’s tone is so wobbly and all over the place that when Archie tells his best friend/worst enemy/partner/nemesis that his mother is drunk and high all the time it’s not clear whether that’s supposed to be hilarious, because mothers sparking fat doobies are inherently comic or dramatic, because a negligent or just plain stoned and checked out mother could help explain Archie’s seedy descent into small-time criminality. 

We get a conclusive if unsatisfying answer when one of the final things we see is an unmistakably comic tableau of Archie’s mom sparking up some of that sticky-icky while her son and his new/old best friend engage in shenanigans in Mexico, far from the prying eyes of the American law enforcement community. 

Researching the article I made a surprising discovery: nearly a QUARTER CENTURY after the Razzie nominated Bulletproof’s quiet death at the box-office Don Michael Paul, the man behind such direct-to-video sequels you did not know existed as Jarhead 2: Field of Fire, Sniper: Legacy, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, Kindergarten Cop 2, Sniper: Ghost Shooter, Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, The Scorpion King: Book of Souls, Jarhead: Law of Return AND Tremors: Island Fury continued his life’s work making sequels nobody asked for with Bulletproof 2. 

Bulletproof 2 continues the saga of Jack Carter, tough guy lawman, and Archie Moses, wisecracking small time criminal with a heart of gold, with Faizon Love and Kirk Fox taking over the roles originated by Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler respectively. 

Alas, my hope that Bulletproof 2 would be a 48 Hours for the 1990s were dashed when I saw, under the film’s “Goofs” section on IMDB, “In the early scene, we are shown a picture of Jack Carter and Archie on the cover of a national magazine. Except later we are told that Carter works undercover, something made far more difficult by revealing him nationally.”

I expect better than sloppy storytelling in an insanely tardy direct-to-video sequel to a poorly received Adam Sandler vehicle but it appears that, in sharp contrast to most sequels to mismatched buddy cop movies, Bulletproof 2 was not entirely necessary. 

Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Failure 

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