THE MAN is a formulaic and only occasionally funny cop-buddy movie. The set up is that Samuel L Jackson, Bad-ass and Jedi, is a hard-as-nails cop. His partner has just gone down for corruption, so that Jackson is under suspicion. His mission is to take out a big-time dealer by pretending that he is also a corrupt cop. Unfortunately, the villain of the piece - played with a surprisingly large dollop of credibility by former British boy-band member, Luke Goss - mistakes Eugene Levy for the corrupt cop. Now, Eugene Levy is best known to all of us as the sweet dad in American Pie or as the sweet put-upon husband in a string of mockumentaries like BEST IN SHOW or A MIGHTY WIND. In order to make it credible that the villain would actually believe Levy is a criminal, the script-writers work had on the incidental and frankly, ridiculous, plot details. But you know - any of these odd-couple mistaken-identity movies rely on you buying into the absurd plot set-up. Whether the film still works depends on whether there is genuine chemistry between the two leads and whether the gags are actually funny. Unfortunately for this movie, I found the relationship between Jackson and Levy unfunny and abusive. How many more times do we have to see a wise-cracking hard-ass black guy take the piss out of a geeky white guy? This stuff is tired. Worse still, it generates bad cinema - anyone who doesn't believe me after seeing THE MAN should check out that horribly Queen Latifah-Jimmy Fallon flick TAXI. So, please Hollywood, let's bury this genre or at least get in better funny-men to do the script.
THE MAN goes on release in the UK and US today and hits France on January 11th 2006.
THE MAN goes on release in the UK and US today and hits France on January 11th 2006.
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