Number One With a Bullet

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Audience Member Ah, that most popular of all mismatched buddy cops, Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Williams. Written by Rob Riley, Andrew Kurtzman (both writers from Saturday Night Live), Gail Morgan Hickman (Murphy's Law and Death Wish 4: The Crackdown) and James Belushi — yes, the James Belushi — and directed by Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady, The Illustrated Man, Damnation Alley), this is the story of two cops, the borderline psychotic Nick "Berserk" Barzack (Carradine) and smooth jazz playing ladies' man Frank Hazeltine (Williams). Not many buddy cop movies have the cops dealing with one of their relationships with their mother and ex-wife, who are played by Doris Roberts and Valerie Bertinelli. And in case you're wondering why Belushi wasn't in this, it turns out that his schedule was too busy, so they called in Carradine. Hey! Peters Graves is in this! And John Gries! Man, John Gries, you're in so much stuff that no one gives you credit for, making movies like Real Genius better as Lazlo, Joysticks as King Vidiot, O.D. in TerrorVision, you steal the show as Louie in Fright Night 2, you're great as the wolfman in Monster Squad and yeah, everyone knows you were in Napoleon Dynamite but those roles, man — you've done so much with them. And yes, if you have mud wrestling or any wrestling in your movie made in the 70s or 80s, Gene LeBell must legally be in it. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member Partners track a drug ring linked to a very influential man within the city. The expected trappings of the buddy cop film are here, you shouldn't expect too much originality with a Cannon offering. Decent chemistry between Billy Dee and Carradine aside, this may not have quite reached its full potential. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/24/23 Full Review Audience Member Average action film from the Cannon Group, who was just exiting a great run producing the best action films in the industry. Here we have two cops using their own methods to take down a drug ring. The Golan-Globus budgets were not yet significantly cut as evidenced by the airplane and helicopter aerial dog fight. Billy Dee Williams always offers some value add. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Back in the 1980's when life was simple and a movie could be made and thrown into theaters for under a million dollars, you didn't really have to put a lot of effort into them in order to make them profitable. Cannon Films were the king of that kind of shoddy filmmaking, and "Number One With a Bullet" is one of their laziest police thrillers ever. It throws in every police buddy picture cliche you can think of, from the estranged wife to the surprise twist involving a dirty cop, and the threadbare plot was pieced together from dozens of films that came before. Apparently Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris were off somewhere filming the five movies they would release under the Cannon banner in 1987, so here we get the ragtag team of Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Williams. Both are totally wrong for their respective roles as you never buy them as these hardened career officers for an instance, and the actors have little chemistry together. The one-liners are tired and there's not one surprise or original thought to be found. The movie does have more unnecessary sub-plots than we're used to, such as Doris Roberts as Carradine's doting mother, and it has the worst score I ve heard in a cop thriller in a long time. The background music never has anything to do with what's going on in the film. There's also a lot more plot than action. The action sequences are confined to a few routine car chases and shootouts. Everything about "Number One With a Bullet" is vaguely familiar, and not much of it is worth seeing again. It's forgotten about as quickly as it's over with. Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member Cop action, with laughs 80's style Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Another good Duo and another slightly funny film. WHat makes this filmwork is that it's not just another goodcop-Bad cop action flick. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Number One With a Bullet

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