While Bruce Willis once again dons his wisecracking cop persona this weekend in Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, Joel Massie from GoneWithTheTwins.com examines the Top 10 Greatest Movie Cops of all time.
The Top 10 Movie Cops
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10. Popeye Doyle from The French Connection
Gene Hackman’s rugged narcotics division detective Popeye Doyle won him the Academy Award for best actor and rightfully so. Determined to get his man, Doyle roughs up crooks, assaults informants, and chases an elevated train through Brooklyn while destroying nearly everything in sight. He never gives up even when the bad guy escapes and the sequel drags his good name through the mud.
Best Policework: Doyle shoots the unarmed hitman Nicoli in the back while he’s fleeing. To be fair though, Nicoli did try to kill him a few times earlier in the film.
9. Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop
The biggest box office smash of 1984 finds fast-talking, heavy-bullshitting Detroit cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) investigating the murder of his friend in Beverly Hills. The fish-out-of-water plot is heightened by Murphy’s delirious improv and the excellent supporting cast including John Ashton and Judge Reinhold as the by-the-books officers in charge of keeping tabs on reckless Foley.
Best Policework disguised as an afternoon at a strip club disguised as a vacation: : “Before I go, I just want you two to know something, alright? The supercop story... was working. Okay? It was working, and you guys just messed it up. Okay? I'm trying to figure you guys out, but I haven't yet. But it's cool. You f*ck up a perfectly good lie.”
8. Dick Tracy from Dick Tracy
Sporting his signature yellow trenchcoat and hat, Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) wages war against a whopping 21 gangsters pulled from the pages of Chester Gould’s original comic strip, including the creatively deformed Flattop, Littleface, and The Brow. He also has to battle the innuendo-laden advances of seductress Breathless Mahoney (a still-cute Madonna), making him a tough cop indeed.
Best Police Interrogation: Dick Tracy: “You know, it's legal for me to take you down to the station and sweat it out of you under the lights.”
Breathless Mahoney: “I sweat a lot better in the dark.”
7. Inspector “Tequila” Yuen from Hard Boiled
When it comes to cinema, police in the U.S. aren’t the only bad-ass upholders of justice as made evident by John Woo’s action masterpiece Hard Boiled. With a body count of over three hundred, 100,000 rounds of ammunition fired, and villains with names like “Mad Dog”, Hong Kong cop Tequila (Chow Yun-Fat) has his work cut out for him.
Best Policework: Tequila and undercover cop Alan rescue babies from an exploding hospital while having a shoot-out with gangsters. Not a single prop baby dies.
6. T-1000 Terminator from Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Sure he was an evil cyborg whose mission was to kill a little boy which would in turn bring about the destruction of all mankind, but he was still an effective cop who only used torture and murder when good manners didn’t get him anywhere.
Best Policework: “Have you seen this boy?”
5. Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs
Few have confronted Hannibal Lecter and lived to tell about it but Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) not only milked the serial killer for info but got a free psychiatric session out of it. Well, it might not have happened as smoothly as that, but at least she didn’t get her liver eaten with fava beans and chianti.
Best Policework: Starling single-handedly deciphers Lecter’s cryptic clues and tracks down Buffalo Bill. And then has to kill him by herself in his house in the dark.
4. Lt. Vincent Hanna from Heat
Al Pacino is at his best when portraying weathered cops and while Serpico may be his most critically esteemed achievement, Heat’s Lt. Vincent Hanna is his most explosive. Facing off against Robert De Niro makes Heat quite a masterpiece in cops and robbers cinema.
Best Police Order: “Don’t waste my motherf---ing time!”
3. Robocop from Robocop
Peter Weller’s badass cyborg cop was a true one-man army in a dystopian future Detroit as envisioned by Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier. The victim of a murderous gang of criminals and a secret experimental project, veteran officer Murphy becomes the title robotic law enforcer with a mission to kick ass and chew bubblegum. Or at least reconstituted paste. I’d buy that for a dollar!
Best Law Enforcement Line: “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.”
2. John McClane from Die Hard
New York police detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) has to stop a gang of international terrorists (or thieves) led by diabolical mastermind Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), stall off the FBI, stop the Nakatomi Plaza building from blowing up, and rescue his hostage wife Holly – all while he’s on vacation. Then he has to do it all over again three more times.
Best Police Negotiation: Hans Gruber: “I assume you are our mysterious party crasher. You are most troublesome, for a security guard.”
John McClane: “Eeeh! Sorry Hans, wrong guess. Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy where the scores can really change?”
1. Harry Callahan from Dirty Harry
Practically starting a whole genre of cop movies, Dirty Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) took shit from no one, including his superiors and especially not psychotic serial killer “Scorpio”. With his .44 Magnum and an appetite for justice, he’ll kick your ass whether he fired six shots or only five.
Best Police Rebuttal: District Attorney Rothko: “Where the hell does it say that you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel? Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is that man had rights!”
Harry Callahan: “Well, I'm all broken up over that man's rights.”
Runners Up: Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon, Jim Malone from The Untouchables, John Spartan from Demolition Man, Ed Exley from L.A. Confidential, Bullitt from Bullitt, David Mills from Se7en, Hartigan from Sin City
- Joel Massie
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