PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

ClassyWas Excellent, smart action film.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

calvinnme This has to be one of the worst movies I ever saw. I should have known by it's release date - September - I was in for less than a treat. That's after all of the summer blockbusters have been released and before the academy award possibilities start cropping up in October/November. And remember, 1996 was the year that the word "blockbuster" was defined by unwatchable schlock such as Independence Day and Twister.Jack Keats (Damon Wayons) is an undercover cop posing as a car thief in order to get information from a real car thief, Archie Moses (Adam Sandler). The two have actually developed a kind of friendship during the time they are working together. After gaining his trust, Moses offers to introduce Keats to his boss, drug kingpin Frank Colton (James Caan). Keats jumps at the chance to home in on bigger criminal game. Thus as Keats is meeting Colton for the first time, the police appear on the scene to make their arrests in the case. In the resulting chaos, Keats is shot in the head. Keats has a slow but sure recovery. On the bright side, he falls in love with the woman who helps him recover. On the negative side, he now has a metal plate in his head. Afterwards, when he is back on duty, Keats is assigned to escort Moses back to testify against his former employer Colton, a situation neither one is looking forward to. Keats is angry because thanks to Moses he has a metal plate in his head, and Moses is angry because Keats lied to him over the entire year that he thought they were friends and colleagues. This movie seems to be going for the buddy/road film angle, with the exception of the fact that Keats and Moses run into a series of attempts on their lives since Colton, the big drug kingpin, is out to kill them both. This forces them to work together to figure out why their every move seems to be known by Colton before they even make it.Both Wayans and Sandler can be very funny if given the right material, but neither has anything particularly funny to do or say here, since the material they are working with is totally lacking in the imagination and genuine humor that could have exploited the talents of the two leading men. Avoid at all cost. The only reason I remember this movie over ten years later is (a) it is incredibly bad even for a "man movie" and (b) my husband insisted we go see it.

zardoz-13 Watching the new disposable Ernest Dickerson action-comedy "Bulletproof," a cops and robbers buddy picture with Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler as the buds, is like munching great junk food. You know it isn't what you should be eating. Nevertheless, it smells delicious and makes you smack your lips together when you chew. The action scenes, when the bad guys (sometimes even the good guys) get the cream puffs kicked out of them, contain a lot of crunch. The crude-oil "Saturday Night Live" comic scenes, which only anal retentive Neanderthals would savor as instructive, are uproariously self-effacing. Serious film genre scholars may give an appreciative nod to "Bulletproof" simply because it triggers happier memories from classic action pictures, such as Clint Eastwood's "The Gauntlet" (1977), Sam Peckinpah's "The Killer Elite" (1974), and the 1958 Tony Curtis & Sidney Poitier version of "The Defiant Ones." Nobody but the average moviegoers who really knows the two perquisite words in movie-going—fun and fake—will truly appreciate this potboiler of a melodrama, with comedy tosses in a spice, for what it aspires to be.The corpses pile up as fast as the clichés in the derivative Joe Gayton and Lewis Colick screenplay. As Detective Keats, Damon Wayans is cast as an undercover cop who convinces Moses (Adam Sandler's dopey but likable criminal blunder brain) that he is his best friend. The trouble begins when Keats bonds a little too well with Moses. Keats feels personally committed to bringing Moses in alive and well. When they try to reel in the kingpin mobster, a wealthy used car salesman played with gleeful abandon by James Caan of "The Godfather." Keats concerns himself more Moses' welfare than the bust. In a weird "Pulp Fiction" torque of events, Moses shoots Keats in the head but neither kills nor cripples him.Moses freaks out, leaves for Mexico, with his pooch (one of those magpie-looking Spuds McKenzie types) to become a bullfighter. The law catches up with Moses, and he agrees to testify against his boss (James Caan) on the condition that Keats serve as his bodyguard. Although Damon Wayans is a truly gifted comic, he could take lessons from his brother Keenen Ivory about playing beefy, tough-guys. Damon acts more like his "Major Payne" character here when he should have used his rugged quarterback hero from "The Last Boy Scout." He is a cheese cake action hero here. But it is fun to watch the antics of Wayans and Sandler (a foul-mouthed, 1950s' era Jerry Lewis wannabe) as they blunder through a series of impossible obstacles. The filmmakers serve up seemingly non-stop action like a Saturday Morning television cartoon. They plunge our bulletproof heroes into several unreal but really predictable predicaments. Eventually, the action brings our buddies to the big shoot'em up in James Caan's palatial residence and at least one surprise. If you figure out that surprise before the Dickerson and company reveal it, you have obviously gone into the wrong theater."Juice" director Dickerson got his start as a cinematographer for Spike Lee in epics such as "Do The Right Thing," makes "Bulletproof" look more visually slick and sophisticate than it deserves to be considering how imitative it remains. Each shot contains imaginative compositional elements that you won't be able to savor on a small screen. The lighting is extremely well-done. Actor James Farentino, who plays Wayan's sinister police department superior, is lighted so evocatively that he appears suspicious.Dickerson's big problem here is that the headlong action must break intermittently at all comedy stops. "Bulletproof" employs comedy to insulate its audiences from the effect of thinking too much about the wildly improbable scenes of simulated violence that recur throughout the film. After somebody gets iced, a joke is delivered to make you forget that they've been killed or, in the case of our heroes, escaped certain death.James Caan indulges himself as the used car salesman drug lord. In one scene, he removes his toupee so it won't get dirty during a showdown with Wayans. Caan gives his villainy the appropriate inflection for the kind of hokum that pads out "Bulletproof." He is nowhere near the bastard that he was in the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller "Eraser." The usual quota of souped-up car chases, gunfights, and four-letter oaths ought to delight hardcore action fans, but they may miss the more amorous matings that occur in the more dramatic male sagas. Composer Elmer Bernstein enhances the super-charged action scenes with some humming, hipster-cool incidental music, especially in the introductory urban car chase scene. "Bulletproof" is definitely no classic, but it has its share of entertaining moments.

FlashCallahan Rock Keats and Archie Moses are best friends and have spent the past year together performing various small time crimes. This all changes when they become involved in a major drug smuggling operation. Rock Keats turns out to be Jack Carter, an undercover police officer and tries to arrest Moses during a failed attempt to catch criminal mastermind Frank Colton. However, Moses ends up shooting Carter and makes an escape. Moses is later caught and agrees to turn state's evidence on Colton with one condition, Carter escorts him in. When they meet, both are bitter towards each other. Unknown to them, Colton's men have orders to take out Moses and arrive to shoot down the transport plane. Carter and Moses end up by themselves in the countryside with Colton's men closing in.........Back in 1996, Wayans was bigger than Sandler, but it was already changing, Wayans had a string of flops and Sandler had just done Billy Madison.Wayans got top billing, and this is probably why it flopped big time.But it's a really fun easy going movie at a running time that couldn't offend anybody. It a load of old cobblers plot wise, and the buddy buddy thing was dying a death, but the two leads are amiable enough and Caan wasn't too bad as the villain.It's not very memorable though, and it's full of clichés, but for Sandler fans and Wayans fans, this will suffice.

ninjagaiden007 I had never heard of this movie before. I was looking in the Video Hire place one night and found the side cover of a movie called "BulletProof." I knew I was gonna get it. So I got it straight away. Brought it home and pressed play. I was 99% sure it was going to be great. The second I started it, it was action. This movie never bored me once, not even for half a second. The direction is excellent. The acting is superb and the movie gets straight down to business. I don't know how it does this, but somehow it manages to be action and comedy all at the same time. It never gets boring. The laughs and the action keeps coming. This movie does consist of some pornographic material, but I wont go there, i'll keep this review appropriate. I recommend it to people who love action/comedy movies and who support and love the two main actors. 9/10