Tonight with Friends: If Lethal Weapon exists, it’s thanks to this Eddie Murphy film

Tonight with Friends: If Lethal Weapon exists, it’s thanks to this Eddie Murphy film

48 Hours is one of the best-selling buddy movies of the 80s at the US box office, grossing 78 million on a 12 million budget. This made it the 7th biggest American hit of 1982 and you can find it today on Paramount+.

Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte

San Francisco. Detective Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) interviews Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), who was recently involved in a robbery that went missing. In exchange for help finding his former accomplices, Reggie negotiates his release. For now, his release is only temporary: Jack only has 48 hours to complete his mission with Reggie’s help.

The recipe is as old as time: two people forced to work together when almost everything is against them. But directed by Walter Hill, the recipe is crafted by a professional who takes violence like no other and is clearly influenced by Sam Peckinpah. It is valid for 48 hours. The dark, gloomy city of San Francisco has never looked more disturbing than it does during Hill’s night patrol.

The duo of Nick Nolte – Eddie Murphy works very well, despite the fact that this is the first feature film with comics, more used to the stage than to film. For the record, these two characters were originally to be played by Clint Eastwood and Richard Pryor.

48 Hours revived the buddy film in the United States, offering a duet between a white man and a black man, and its success led to other duets in the same genre, some of which were also successful, such as Lethal Weapon (1987) and its sequels, Two Cops in Chicago (1986), The Last Samaritan (1991 ), A Day in Hell (1995), Cash, Nothing to Lose or Men in Black (1997).

One of the pioneering films on this subject was Stanley Kramer’s “Chain”, which put the duo of Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in the position of chained prisoners after escaping. A feature film that hasn’t aged a bit, both in style and form. Unfortunately, it’s not available across platforms and currently only physical means allow you to view it.

Source: Allocine

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