For 50 years,Saturday Night Livehas served as the launchpad for comedians to make their leap from the stage to the silver screen. While some icons such asJohn BelushiandBill Murraywere able to land bonafide hits right away, others stumbled almost immediately. But fewlit up the screen as fast asEddie Murphydid in his 1982 cinematic debut,48 Hrs.
Murphy was the rare case of a comedian to become an overnight movie star when he played Reggie Hammond in theWalter Hillcop thriller. At age 21, the stand-up comic from Long Island had already savedSNLwhen the show was struggling without its original Not Ready for Prime Time Players. His unforgettable celebrity impressions and parodies of the likes ofThe Little Rascals’ Buckwheat made the young comic the nextRichard Pryor. Such eyebrow-raising humormade Murphy a difference-maker in an otherwise gritty and mean action movie.
Eddie Murphy Changed ‘48 Hrs.’ From a Cop Drama to a Comedy
On paper,48 Hrs.reads like an averageDirty Harrysequel: Sloppy alcoholic cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) has to track down two cop killers (James RemarandSonny Landham) who stole his gun around San Francisco.There is no comedy at all within the first 20 minutesbetween the criminals’ violent escape from a prison chain gang to Cates’ colleagues getting brutally gunned down inside a sleazy hotel. Under the direction of Hill, best known for such dark thrillers asThe DriverandSouthern Comfort,the shooting style and tone of48 Hrs.is not that different from a violent ‘70s cop drama.
That Time Eddie Murphy Was THIS Close to Starring in a Star Trek Movie
Beam me up, Eddie!
The separation from what looks like a standardClint Eastwoodpicture stops as soon as Murphy’s Hammond enters the story as a former accomplice of the bad guys allowed two days out of jail to help Cates find them while locating the stolen money he stashed away years earlier. Hammond could have been played by virtually any Black actor of the era with the standard racial tropes of a hip and jive attitude. However, that was not Murphy’s style. As Hammond,Murphy commanded the screen with his sharp suit and quick wit, and was unafraid to challenge Nolte’s downtrodden detective.
What begins as a relentlessly violent action picture changes course into a film full of situational comedy once Murphy enters the story with his classic moment of singingThe Police’s “Roxanne” inside his jail cell. Yet, it is the moment when he commands his fearless authority in the middle of a racist redneck bar that stands out the most. According toNick de Semlyen’s bookWild and Crazy Guys, Hill and the filmmakers behind48 Hrs.were extremely nervous for Murphy to pull this off.In that unforgettable five-minute sequence, Murphy would forever cement his place in film historywhen he combined the ad-lib stylings of Pryor with the defiance of theBlaxploitationera by one-upping the backwoods patrons flashing Cates’ badge while calling himself their worst “f**king nightmare.”
Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in ‘48 Hrs.’ Helped Launch the Buddy Cop Genre
The pairing of Murphy and Nolte was a complete contrast to Pryor andGene Wilderin their hitsSilver StreakandStir Crazy. They are not buffoons or average guys caught in dangerous situations. As the respective conman and the cop are frequently at odds with their insults and fists, Hammond and Cates cannot stand each other, nor do they want to waste time finding killers, as Cates struggles to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend, Elaine (Annette O’Toole), while Hammond would rather hook up with a woman before returning to jail. Butthese are essentially two losers who underestimate each otherand eventually develop mutual respect once Cates apologizes for making racial slurs towards Hammond.
The push and pull of Murphy and Nolte’s relationship against the backdrop of a serious thriller resulted in something that Hill unintentionally created:the birth of thebuddy cop movie. Though director Hill approached the picture with fast-paced nighttime urban action similar to his 1979 classicThe Warriors, he paved the way for action movies to appear serious in tone and cinematography while injecting humor that feels realistic rather than slapstick. Future buddy cop movies such asLethal Weapon,Beverly Hills Cop, andBad Boyswould follow this very formula with great success.
Murphy, Nolte, and Hill would attempt to recapture the magic eight years later with a48 Hrs.sequel. Despite being darker and violent, the overall direction was a thin copy of the groundbreaking original which forever changed cop movies in the decades to come. Even with all of Murphy’s success in subsequent years, he never quite topped that dynamite debut on film.
