On the couch

It seems likely that Will Ferrell got a look at the script for The Other Guys at least once. In fairness to the man, he clearly had a grasp of the story and where it was going but very little of what is an hilarious performance seems to come from anywhere other than the dark recesses of the actor’s mind.
That’s not to say that the rest of the film isn’t funny. Mark Wahlberg and Steve Coogan are front and centre in a quality cast that gets the best out of a funny script that out cop movies its summer contemporary, Kevin Smith’s Cop Out.
Wahlberg and Ferrell star as Gamble and Hoitz, New York City detectives who work in the considerable shadow of supercops Highsmith and Danson (played with ridiculous aplomb by Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson). Gamble is a forensic accountant more interested in paperwork than the mean streets of the Big Apple and Hoitz is the butt of departmental jokes after accidentally shooting a popular sports star – the pair aren’t even second fiddle to their big time co-workers. At a push they might rank third tambourine.
When a seemingly innocuous case of improperly filed scaffolding licences turns into one of high finance, kidnapping and murder, the two boys find themselves out of their depth and in rising hot water.
It’s the sort of story you’d expect from a direct-to-DVD flick but the strict adherance to a policy of deadpan comedy, even in the face of Ferrell’s wild tangents – the one about tuna fish getting a taste for lion flesh and rising out of the ocean to feast is a prime example – and Wahlberg’s occasional outbursts and Steve Coogan’s slightly Partridge-influenced slimy hedgefund manager makes it an absolute hoot.
Nearly every classic cop flick standard is hit upon – partners hate each other; chief shuts the investigation down under suspicious circumstances; ridiculous car chases featuring a Prius. The genre isn’t being ridiculed though. Not entirely. While Jackson and Johnson’s characters are cartoonish in behaviour and exploit – just like movie cops would be – the problems facing Gamble and Hoitz are far more mundane and their humour comes more from Ferrell being, well, himself, and an excellent, witty script.
Surprisingly for a comedy, the action scenes, when they come, are pretty exciting, making good use of Wahlberg’s long history in action flicks.
The only problem with The Other Guys, if one has to be found, is that it’s likely to ruin any other cops and robbers film you watch for a while after it…  
Which leads us to Takers – John Lussenhop’s low-rent Ocean’s Eleven-tinged cops and robbers flick. A solid genre movie, it’s about as entertaining as it could be expected to be given its cast features rappers making their movie debuts and Paul “watchable nonsense” Walker.
A gang of expert thieves, led by Gordon Crozier (The Wire’s Idris Elba) are approached by a former member, Ghost (TI), who is recently released from jail after serving a lengthy sentence instead of giving up his accomplices.
Despite suspicions over the timeframe allowed for the job and questions over Ghost’s trustworthiness, the promise of a massive cash haul is enough to set the crew into action.
Dogging their tracks, mostly unnoticed, are detectives Welles and Hatcher (Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez). For most of the flick the two cops seems to occupy their own little movie that shares a few sets with the robbery story but eventually their tale of problems with internal affairs, sick kids and ex-wives gets folded into the main plot as everything about them gets jettisoned in favour of a really, really big gun fight that does its damnedest to rip off True Romance.
It’s all perfectly tolerable fare. The leads, Elba and Dillon, are dependable sorts, though high-profile associates Walker and Christensen are underused. Rapper TI is impressively menacing as Ghost and rises above the blandness of the rest of the cast.
You could do a lot worse than Takers but once you’ve seen The Other Guys it might be hard to take the poe-faced posing as seriously as the film might want you to.