Coming from the Fed side, and having worked a state /local task force in CA:,
As much as I love To Live and Die in LA, the best “cop” movie of the 80s was Colors. Followed by Sharkey’s Machine.
While the plot of Sharkey’s Machine is dumb, the characters and their interaction are spot on. The things I like about Sharkey’s Machine are likely similar to what @blues likes about Running Scared. Some things I love about this movie: While Sharkey is your stereo typical 80s movie super cop, he needs all the other guys on his team to get things done. The other members of his machine all have various strengths and weaknesses. Some are tough, some are smart or have unique talents etc. But they come together as a whole to be more effective than the sum of their parts. For example one of the characters (Nosh) who is technically proficient has to help Sharky clear an apartment. He is competent but he talks about how he hates doing it because it’s scary and even when he was good at it he wasn’t good at it. Hence why he moved into a tech slot. Where as Papa (Brian Keith) and Arch (Bernie Casey) are old school tough cops. Charles Durning (one of my all time favorite character actors) is just awesome as the LT.
To Live and Die in LA is the best “Fed” Movie of all time. Not just the 80s.
ManHunter is also awesome, I recall being wowed by the scene where they receive a fax of the suspect’s driver’s license photo while in the air enroute to St. Louis. I think about that as my partners and and I routinely text photos of suspects out before operations.
Last edited by HCM; 04-05-2022 at 02:24 PM.
Double tap
"Colors" and "To Live and Die in L.A." are two of my favorites from the era.
(I have to throw in my favorite of recent years which is "End of Watch"...apologies for jumping time frames.)
There's nothing civil about this war.
The Untouchables for sure.
Is Die Hard a cop movie or not? I know it's the best Christmas movie of all time.
@LittleLebowski.....I think what we have definitively learned here, is that the '80s were the greatest decade for cop movies....ever.