Metro (1997)

In Metro Murphy plays a streetwise police negotiator in San Fransisco named Scott Roper, in fact the best negotiator on the force. Roper's track record in getting hostages out alive is the envy of his colleagues and allows him leeway with his superiors. Unfortunately the stress of the job meant that Roper became introverted and shut out everything around him, including his girlfriend Ronnie who ultimately left him when he started gambling heavily as an outlet.Enter new partner Kevin McCall (Michael Rappaport), a young rookie straight from training who despite being highly skilled is raw and un-streetwise – if that were a word.Metro has two good scenes and one decent character. The two good scenes are a long chase that takes place on the San Fransisco streets and uses their tram system to full advantage, the second such scene is a training montage that lasts maybe two minutes and allows Murphy the freedom to go a little wild by creating a made up criminal for McCall to negotiate with.The decent character I haven't touched on yet, but given that the film is about a hostage negotiator it seems fairly obvious that there need be someone for Roper to test his skills on.That someone is Michael Korda (Michael Wincott), a man with dark sunken eyes, the emaciated appearance of the undernourished and the gravelly voice of a chain smoker. His hard as nails, emotionless performance as a potentially insane, definitely dangerous Korda is thankfully lacking in hamminess or over-acting, but overflowing with menace and intensity. It is not the end of the world that the bad guy in a film is by far the best thing in it, but in an action comedy with not enough of either, where the bad guy in reality is the third or fourth banana it simply isn't good enough.The strength of Korda's characterisation and a fairly brutal development results in some genuine animosity between the pair, which makes the inevitable stand off near the end somewhat more bearable, even if it is laced with logic flaws and some mediocre action sequences.Ultimately Metro ended up only marginally better than A Vampire in Brooklyn, by trying to play against the 'typical' Eddie Murphy movie they managed to create a film only marginally different, but one lacking enough of anything to make it worthwhile.Final Rating – 5 / 10. The perception of intensity, the illusion of humour and the delusion of adequacy. Eddie Murphy takes a stab at semi-serious and fails. I don't hate Metro, but aside from a cool villain there is nothing to love.

Randy Feldman, who worked as the writer and producer on this movie, has four theatrical releases on his belt, the other three being the painfully bad horror flick 'Hell Night', the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle 'Nowhere to Run' (which I have not seen but can only assume it's as bad as any other of Van Damme film) and the eighties cop flick 'Tango & Cash', which received some audience acclaim. To state 'Metro' is by far his most memorable attempt at a screenplay isn't really a compliment, it seems he always kept the 'screenplay writing for dummies' book by hand during his writing sessions. We have the typical hero-cop; underpaid, under-appreciated by his boss, personal problems galore,financial troubles to boost, a smirking sense of humor, and of course a personal investment in the investigation ('now it's personal :-)). So we have the good cop with a revenge motive, but the chase isn't enough to fill the runtime. No, we also are forced to suffer - surprise, surprise - the obligatory (but in this case unfortunately also clumsily set up) love interest played by a young Carmen Ejogo. Sure; she's very easy on the eyes but as an actress she's sub-par. Then we have a fellow cop, lifelessly portrayed by Art Evans, and it must be said the poor fellow's been typecast, his role in the script is mainly to be victimized(also see: Die Hard 2 for an almost identical role). His monotone delivery and robot-like autopilot acting certainly didn't lift this film to a higher level, neither did Denis Arndt's one-dimensional police chief, the villain whose dialog consisted primarily of grunting or the gross of the side-characters for that matter. They are mainly present for giving us some insight in our lead's personal life (and some perspective) and of course to pitch for Eddie Murphy's jokes. The only roles that still spring to mind as I recollect on the movie today are Michael Rapaport and Donal Logue, both competently playing their respective roles.Other clichés for the fanatic cliché-spotters among you, the rain suddenly appearing when a tragic event happened: both when Murphy's friend is murdered, as when there's an attempted murder on his girlfriend. Speaking of which, there's one cliché scene to build up the tension before the attempt, where we see Ejogo in a shoulder-shot frame as she puts on perfume in front of a bathroom mirror. She opens and closes the mirror/cabinet two times, with tense music playing, as if any moment some creep will appear behind her (the best use of that sort of scene can be found at the end of 'Candyman').The action scenes felt very standard. The soundtrack bugged me to a lesser degree, it really couldn't make up its mind. The other big flaws are an OD of love story, a waste of plot opportunities (a lot more tactical SWAT stuff would've been welcome) and a lack of funny scenes (especially with the cop partners). But it is precisely that humor that keeps 'Metro' from totally falling apart, I'll never be Murphy's biggest fan but as a comedian he's far from mediocre (although we don't see his best work in this movie). I did appreciate the way they threw us off track time after time: as to who (or what) Troy is, the restaurant scenes (with the implied marriage proposal) and the hostage negotiation training scene. Those scenes, and the opening hostage situation, made up 90% of the enjoyment level of 'metro' for me. In the end 'Metro' can be summed up as painfully (almost insultingly) mediocre but still enjoyable because of the humor involved.

Eddie Murphy tries to act serious as well as funny as Detective Scott Roper, and he actually carries it off rather well. Wanting revenge for his partner's death, he's led on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with Michael Wincott, who will not let him win easily...The main highlights of Metro are a thrilling car chase sequence and the explosive ending! This is not the best film I have ever seen, but Wincott is immensely good as criminal Korda, displaying an almost never-ending desire to bring Roper down, even if it means double murder....Metro is a fast-paced thrilling (and funny) movie from start to finish containing many startling and cunning plots that may seem a little odd at first but smoothing out to a satisfactory conclusion. I can definitely understand why it was a huge success at the box-office: it is very enjoyable!

(Spoiler)This movie is really good but before i watched it i thought that this movie would be crap and the funny Eddie Murphy from the great movie Beverly Hills Cop stars in this movie along side other good actors and actors like Michael Rapaport,Kim Miyori,Art Evans and Michael Wincott.There are heaps of great action scenes in this movie and the best one has to be the great car chase half way into the movie and the scenes in the end of the movie are great as well.Over all this movie is really good and it is worth watching and my rating is 6 out of 10.