I recently caught up with this 2019 action-comedy and felt it was recent enough to write about. It’s another in a long line of mismatched-buddy pictures, where the manic cop character pulls the other guy along for a wild ride. It reminded me of the classic 48 Hrs. (1982), but Dave Bautista is not Nick Nolte in his prime, nor is Kumail Nanjiani an Eddie Murphy in his prime. Still, it’s not bad, but neither is it very good.

Michael Dowse’s film has bull-in-a-china-shop cop Vic Manning (Bautista) obsessed with finding the criminal who killed his partner. Naturally, the big break comes on the day he undergoes eye surgery. He tries to drive but cannot, so he calls Uber for a lift, winding up with stuffy Stu (Nanjiani) as his driver. Before long Stu is neck deep in the action, but that doesn’t prevent him from whining and complaining the whole time.

Convention demands that they function as yin and yang, improving each other’s lot in life, even as they bicker. And it works, up to a point. There’s a very nice pit bull dog along for comic sentimentality and some nasty gun violence to keep the audience awake. There are also some possibly troublesome aspects if you search them out: for instance, Manning is betrayed three times by women, twice by black women. Is the film saying something there? I don’t know, but it made me uncomfortable.

Bautista, a former wrestler, is an unlikely choice for movie star, but with his endearing role as Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy / Avengers movies he is looking to branch out. Nanjiani, who has worked as a comedian and an actor, is looking for a follow-up hit to The Big Sick. They deserve success, but they’ll have to do better than this kind of movie. It has its moments, but has no timelessness to it. ☆ ☆. 15 December 2020.