Get your own Free Home Page
I’m a little surprised nobody else has mentioned this, that I’ve heard anyway, but while Martin Lawrence was starring with Eddie Murphy, the former must have gotten some advice from the latter. Whether intentionally or not, he’s found his first big solo hit in a formula featuring shtick that will sound at least superficially familiar to anyone who remembers Murphy’s breakout 1982 film, 48 Hours: in Blue Streak Lawrence plays a criminal who gets out of jail and teams up with a white cop, hamming it up in a couple different guises as he goes.
To his credit, Lawrence does put a fresh spin on the routine, starring as Miles Logan, a jewel thief who, suffering double-cross by a traitorous partner during the heist of a $17 million diamond, stashes the rock in an air duct of a half-completed building nearby. The cops nab him, but he gets out in two years, only to discover the the now-finished construction grew up to be a police station. After an abortive attempt to sneak in as one of Lawrence’s trademark, disarmingly silly characters, he decides to masquerade as a detective. With the help of some forged papers and a few days of watching nothing but “Cops” on TV, gains entry to the sacred halls of law enforcement. But he finds himself tracking the jewel deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building, and must take up real police work to maintain the scam, much to the confusion of a former larcenous compadre (Dave Chappelle, from Con Air) he keeps having to arrest.
Naturally, his insight to, and familiarity with, the criminal element makes him an instant success, as everyone assumes his forged background must mean he’s working undercover for somebody important. Though saddled with a clueless partner (Rushmore’s Luke Wilson), he ironically finds himself promoted to chief detective of burglary, and winds up taking on “bad” criminals when the diamond falls into a cache of heroin serving as bait for drug smugglers. Complicating things even more, the dishonorable thief who screwed up the orginal theft is after the slippery gem, too, and is a lot more casual about who he has to snuff to get it.
Lawrence is well cast as the quick-thinking, hyperkinetic Logan, as he really can talk up a proverbial azure stripe, even though he swears less than usual this time out (and sometimes can’t come up with any better non-profanity than to keep repeating, “buh-leev dat”), earning a PG-13 rating and plenty of younger moviegoers for his restraint. So it’s all the more regrettable Blue Streak screeches to a halt with no better payoff than a hopelessly weak, contrived ending, courtesy of director Les Mayfield (Encino Man, Flubber) and a team of three scriptwriters who among them can only boast a tepid 1990 comedy (Short Time) and a couple forgettable horror films. But it earned $19 million in its first three days, the second best opening weekend on record for a film released in September, so Logan, the kind of guy you’d like to duct tape in real life but is hilarious on film, will probably be back for a sequel and the chance to do it better next go ‘round. C+
Get your own Free Home Page