The Rookie

Eastwoods forgettable detective flick with Charlie Sheen

This is another Clint Eastwood cop thriller. What immediately comes to mind? The five Dirty Harry films, right? Or The Gauntlet (1977)? All great or near-great Eastwood cop pictures. So you'd expect the same from 1990's The Rookie, costarring Charlie Sheen as the sidekick. Well, you'd be wrong.

Something keeps The Rookie from attaining the heights of those other Eastwood cop films. It even pales compared to Tightrope (1984) and Blood Work (2002). Dont get me wrong, there are some entertaining elements and the thrills certainly pick up in the overblown last act, but the flicks too contrived and even falls into camp territory at times.

Furthermore, Sheens unconvincing as...

Decent action flick, rubbish buddy cop movie.

The reason for the latter is that Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen just don't really work as a pairing, when I think of great buddy cop duos - see the preceding '<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/lethal-weapon/" rel="nofollow">Lethal Weapon</a>' or the succeeding '<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/rush-hour/" rel="nofollow">Rush Hour</a>' - I always recall the banter and that the two are subconsciously looking out for each other. Here, it just felt like Eastwood and Sheen weren't connected - despite being policing partners.

The action elements help raise this film from the depths though, as all the set pieces and stuff like that come off - there's one scene that Michael Bay would lov...

There is a movie with James Woods that I keep mistaking for this one.

Anyway, it falls under the "What did you expect?" category of flick. It's not good... it's not bad either. No one expected it to be a box office bomb, no one expected it to be the next big thing either.

They set out to make a fun and entertaining throw away cop movie and that was exactly what they ended up making, a fun and entertaining action flick.

And that is all it is, something to like and throw away, so it did it's job.