Search - Blue Streak [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

James Berardinelli ...i loved it as you can see

Inspector Gadget | 12/09/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Blue Streak appears to be Martin Lawrence's attempt at a Beverly Hills Cop - and it's not a particularly effective one. Even though I'm not a booster of the 1984 Eddie Murphy vehicle, it nevertheless possessed one critical asset that is entirely absent from Blue Streak: energy. This movie is stillborn. In general, action/comedies are dubious enterprises, and this one makes it apparent why. When the action isn't exciting and the comedy isn't funny, the result is almost painful. Lawrence has become involved in a film that makes us acutely embarrassed for him. Lawrence's past movies have been hit-or-miss affairs. With the exception of A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, the actor/comedian has not gone solo, and this has been to his advantage. He's at his best when he has someone of equal stature and screen presence to play off of. In Bad Boys, it was Will Smith. In Nothing to Lose, it was Tim Robbins. And in Life, it was Eddie Murphy. Now, in Blue Streak, it's... Luke Wilson? I suppose the idea is that Wilson is intended to be the straight man, but Lawrence's antics are rarely amusing enough to warrant someone in that role, and the script lacks the deftness to handle anything more sophisticated than Lawrence dressing up in a disguise and acting like an idiot. The story postulates the unlikely (but nevertheless potentially amusing) scenario that lifelong thief Miles Logan (Lawrence) is masquerading as a cop to retrieve a huge diamond he hid in one of the police station's air ducts two years ago. Of course, Miles only intends for the charade to last about an hour - just long enough for him to get into the secure part of the building, find an entrance to the ventilation system, retrieve his "property," and get out - but a series of coincidences conspire against him. Almost before he realizes what's going on, he has been saddled with a strait-laced partner named Carlson (Wilson), has made his first bust, and is being promoted to lead detective in the burglary division. What's more, Miles discovers that police work isn't all that bad. Unfortunately, two characters from his past surface to put his plans in danger, and one, the oily Deacon (Peter Greene), is out for blood. The film relies heavily on Martin Lawrence for its success, but the actor is unable to deliver convincingly. Given the right material, Lawrence can be very funny (even in Nothing to Lose, a mostly-forgettable film, he had some hilarious moments), but there's nothing in Blue Streak that unleashes his comic potential. He's left floundering in a story that wants to turn him into an action hero, which he isn't. Little help is provided by the supporting cast, either. Luke Wilson (Home Fries) is bland, Peter Greene (Pulp Fiction) plays his usual role as a psycho, and David Chappelle is consistently irritating. Director Les Mayfield (Flubber) mistakenly believes that if he throws enough pyrotechnics and gunfights onto the screen, the audience will forget about things like plot and character development. Since this is a comedy, we don't expect much of either here, but, for Blue Streak to work on any level, there has to be something more substantial than the pointless, paper-thin offerings of this screenplay. The film gets bogged down in the routine, tension-free chases and shoot-outs that typically sink these kinds of productions. Towards the beginning, it briefly seems as if Blue Streak intends to do something with the premise of the crook who unwittingly becomes revered as a top cop, but that aspect is quickly relegated to background noise. Unlike Bill Murray's The Man Who Knew Too Little, Blue Streak doesn't have the gumption to stretch things to ludicrous levels. With so little to hold an audience's attention, Blue Streak is a 95-minute waste of time that will have all but the most undiscriminating viewers seeing red."