Movie Review: The Man

In The Man, a mind-numbingly formulaic cop-buddy movie, Samuel L. Jackson plays the man and Eugene Levy plays the weenie.

It's a standard-issue dynamic -- lifted from far, far better movies, ranging from Rush Hour to Midnight Run -- that plays one tough, efficient lawman off against a jabbering, screw-up sidekick.

In this case, it's Jackson's surly, unconventional ATF Special Agent Derrick Vann who, through a series of outlandish plot twists, finds himself partnered with Levy's Andy Fidler, an anal-retentive motormouth who works as a dental supplies salesman.

In the cut-and-paste screenplay bearing the fingerprints of five writers (all busy little pilferers), Vann and Fidler are thrown together when really dull-witted gunrunners mistake the mild- mannered Fidler for an international arms dealer.

The snarling Vann doesn't like it one bit, but he's forced to enlist the blabbering salesman in a sting operation to nab a silky, sinister Euro-mobster (played with oily ease by Luke Goss).

That's all you need to know about the paper-thin plot. The only reason it exists is to put the intense, slow-burning Jackson in a car on the mean streets of Detroit with the neurotic, nattering Levy and allow the comic fireworks to explode.

And explode they occasionally do -- especially in a misbegotten scene in which the two pull through a fast-food drive-in and only too late does Vann discover that red meat gives Fidler gas, explosive gas. Har-de-har.

Jackson and Levy are too talented to allow this thing to become totally gross, infantile and mirthless. And so Jackson scores a few sly yuks by alluding to his profane coffee-shop repartee from Pulp Fiction, and Levy wins a few prim chuckles by lecturing his street- smart partner on the appropriate use of the f-word and the wisdom of restraint (a deadpan gag reminiscent of his "American Pie" shtick).

Later, Vann accidentally shoots Fidler in the backside and demonstrates to him the antiseptic properties of taco sauce.

Director Les Mayfield (Encino Man) packs the movie with stuff like that -- semi-funny dialogue, punctuated by antic, slapstick buddy stunts, leavened with mock-sentimental buddy moments, all folded into a sloppy, generic comic-cop procedural.

In the annuls of cop-buddy history, De Niro and Grodin (Midnight Run) and Chan and Tucker (Rush Hour) earn top comic honors. And Nolte and Murphy (48 Hrs.) are in the hall of fame.

Jackson and Levy score a few arresting laughs, but in The Man they're merely rookies among men.

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