Cop Out Blu-ray Review

• 21st Sep 2010

Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan play a couple of long suffering detectives in this call back to the 80s buddy movie. The premise is fairly straight forward. Each cop has his issue (one is about to have his daughter married off and wants to be able to pay his bit towards the wedding in order to give his daughter away, the other fears his wife is cheating on him) whilst they work a case.

Throw into the mix a few supporting characters like the other team of detectives who try to undermine their position, the boss, and a wacky thief played by Sean William Scott.

There are some short docs on the disc, but the most impressive thing about this Blu-Ray is the Maximum Movie Mode (or here the Maximum Comedy Mode) that Warner Brothers are trying to push on the format. This has already been exploited to an extent on the likes of the Sherlock Holmes Blu-Ray but here with director Smith it is really pushed far. The MMM basically is the next step on from the audio commentary where Smith acts as a host to the film as you watch – pausing it on many occasions so he can interject about certain scenes and also showing you deleted and alternate scenes. The screen splits apart at other moments allowing stills, subtitled information facts, as well as the director himself standing between shots to address the audience.

When well done as it is here, it’s a fascinating way to pack in information about a film and almost makes watching the featurettes that come attached to the disc almost pointless. The MMM mode is also not limiting itself to the running time of the film, in fact it runs at almost twice the length which is an indicator of the depth that they go into. A big hand then must be given to Smith who is a game presenter. He is already well known by his fan base for doing many recorded Q&A sessions as well as his popular Smodcast. All of which highlights his adeptness as an entertaining host who doesn’t draw any line of subject and likes to talk a lot.

It’s only a shame then that the film hasn’t paid off in terms of comedic quality.

Steven Hurst