Movie: The Other Guys

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

"How outré!"

Plot Overview

Lexicographer Christine Ammer defines “petard, hoisted with one's own: Caught in one's own trap, or defeated with one's own weapons. The original petard was a thick canister filled with gun­powder, which was fastened to a gate or other barrier in order to breach it by exploding. It was a dangerous weapon, because the engineer who set it off could easily be blown sky high (‘hoisted’) when it detonated. Never­the­less, it was so effective that it was widely used.”

Supercops, NYPD Detectives P.K. High­smith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Christopher Danson (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) were hoisted with their own petard in the heat of a chase, leaving a hole in the department. A power­point statement from High­smith had it that every police department is the same - you have your star officers. You have your 9 to 5 officers. And then there's these guys. The other guys here are paper pushers Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg.) The former lacks any greater ambition and the latter has yet to live down the collateral damage done when he discharged his weapon in the line of duty.

When milque­toast Allen and klutzy Terry team up to arrest invest­ment banker David Ershon (Steve Coogan) for small potatoes, building code infractions, they stumble onto big crimes in the financial world.
In the ensuing melee, some here­to­fore unrecog­nized, buried resources emerge to elevate them in the esteem of their fellow officers and in the eyes of an admiring public.

Ideology

An obscure biblical character Agur (Prov. 30:1) while not claiming to be any great one offers a chapter of advice to his buddies, (Prov. 30:2-3) “Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the under­standing of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy.” He gives four career nuggets sized down to his level: (Prov. 30:24) “There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:”

(Prov. 30:25) “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.” The first career counsel is to start working early, in the summer of life. In school Allen developed an application (“Allen and his apps, he loves them”) called faceback. It would display the back of the head given a view of the face. It now helps them identify thieves by displaying their faces whose back­sides were captured on video. His early life consisted of, “I went to school, I made my bed, and at age 11, I audited my parents. Believe me, there were some discrepancies, and I was grounded.” That boy is going places.

(Prov. 30:26) “The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.” Their dwellings offer them protection. The next important career step is to settle in a good location. Allen did: “I became an accountant for the NYPD, the most stable job I could think of.” There he earned his detective's shield. Now he gets to see some street action. A group of homeless people known as “Dirty Mike & The Boys” settle into Allen's conveniently deserted Prius for their orgy. After the police department cleans it up, they hit it again.

Terry's girlfriend Christinith [sic] made a good location choice being NYC to open her art gallery in. She also operates a ballet dance studio. This city veritably oozes artsy types. Terry had even picked up a few steps, as he tells his partner, “We used to do these dance moves when we were kids to show them how queer they were.” Allen replies, “You learned to dance like that sarcas­tically?” Now it helps the cop look better to the girl for a mate choice. They have a weird dynamic.

Terry gets into it, telling his partner, “I don't like you. I think you're a fake cop. The sound of your piss hitting the urinal, it sounds feminine [as opposed to The Rock, ‘Aim for the bushes’]. If you were in the wild, I would attack you, even if you weren't in my food chain. I would go out of my way to attack you. If I were a lion and you were a tuna, I would swim out in the middle of the ocean and freaking eat you and then I'd bang your tuna girl­friend.” That's really a bad idea from a location per­spec­tive. Allen replies, “OK, first off: a lion, swimming in the ocean. Lions don't like water. If you placed it near a river or some sort of fresh water source, that makes sense. But you find your­self in the ocean, 20 foot waves, I'm assuming off the coast of South Africa, coming up against a full grown 800 pound tuna with his 20 or 30 friends, you lose that battle. You lose that battle 9 times out of 10. —”

(Prov. 30:27) “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” Another step is developing an informal support network. Allen tells all: “I was a sopho­more in college. The university I went to decided they needed to raise tuition. A class­mate of mine, Brenda, in an effort to raise money and stay in school came up with a nifty plan where she thought she'd date guys and charge them money.” She needed some­one to do scheduling and offer protection, so Allen acceded to help “my partner in crime.” He ended up with fourteen ladies in his stable. They raked in the dough in their successful enterprise.

(Prov. 30:28) “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.” That palace gets swept regularly, but the spider just puts up a new web. Terry gets reassigned to traffic control and Allen to walking a beat. But they still go at it.

Production Values

“” (2010) was directed by Adam McKay. It was written by Adam McKay and Chris Henchy. It stars Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg and Michael Keaton. Also featured are Eva Mendes as Dr. Sheila Gamble, Derek Jeter as him­self, Ray Stevenson as Roger Wesley, Lindsay Sloane as Francine, Natalie Zea as Christinith, Damon Wayans Jr. as Fosse, Anne Heche as Pamela Boardman, Brooke Shields, Tracy Morgan and Ice-T as Narrator. These big names all came through.

MPA rated it PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material. The action was super but the editing was choppy. Not all the jokes hit the mark but there were so many of them they didn't all have to, enough connected. Of note is the school­girl on a ride-along. The special effects and stunts were awesome. It's a tour de force. Runtime is 1¾ hours.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

Allen was Episcopalian making it work with his Catholic wife. When confronted with a jumper, he called for a bull­horn and a priest. His boss working two jobs to put his bisexual son through college where he'll learn to be a liberal tells his crew at the second job—in a deleted scene—to lay off religion, not to come across like Mormon missionaries. The Beyond in Bed, Bath and Beyond does not extend to religion. The reader may well recall it was the heavy influence of Mormons, which put over the top California's Proposition 8 forbidding same-sex marriage. Some people bring religion to work, others politics.

This was an altogether satisfying movie, both in action and humor. The production, actors and crew do not spare us. Hold tight to your seats.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed to a gasp. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Absolutely amazing special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quotations from the King james Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Ammer, Christine. Fighting Words. Copyright © 1989 by Christine Ammer. New York: Dell Publishing, 1990. Print.

Lions den picture is copyright © Sweet Publishing. Licensed by FreeBibleimages. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.