Best Buddy cop Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of buddy cop cinema — measured across 1,648 indexed frames from 15 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Buddy cop films over-index on goatee, handgun and police officer — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Rush Hour 3 (2007)
Brett RatnerDP J. Michael MuroIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Almost three years after their last adventure in Rush Hour 2 (2001), Carter is now working as a Los Angeles traffic officer, while his friend and ace Hong Kong Police inspector, Lee, escorts the Chinese Ambassador, Han, to the World Criminal Court, to disclose crucial information about the Triads. However, after a botched assassination attempt, the mismatched duo will find themselves in picturesque Paris, struggling to retrieve a precious list of names, as the murderous crime syndicate's henchmen try their best to stop them. Once more, Lee and Carter must fight their way through dangerous gangsters; however, this time, the past has come back to haunt Lee. Will the boys get the job done once and for all?
- 2
Bad Boys II (2003)
Michael BayDP Amir MokriIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Martin Lawrenceas Detective Marcus Burnett
Will Smithas Detective Mike Lowrey
Jordi Mollàas Hector Juan Carlos 'Johnny' Tapia
Detectives Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey of the Miami Narcotics Task Force are tasked with stopping the flow of the drug Ecstasy into Miami. They track the drugs to the whacked-out Cuban drug lord Johnny Tapia, who is also involved in a bloody war with Russian and Haitian mobsters. If that isn't bad enough, there's tension between the two detectives when Marcus discovers that playboy Mike is secretly romancing Marcus’ sister, Syd.
- 3
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Richard DonnerDP Stephen GoldblattIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Martin Riggs is an L.A. cop with suicidal tendencies and Roger Murtaugh is the unlucky police officer with whom Riggs is assigned. Together they uncover a huge drug-smuggling operation, and as their success rate grows so does their friendship.
- 4
White Chicks (2004)
Keenen Ivory WayansDP Steven BernsteinIMDb 5.9TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
Two FBI agent brothers, Marcus and Kevin Copeland, accidentally foil a drug bust. To avoid being fired they accept a mission escorting a pair of socialites to the Hamptons--but when the girls are disfigured in a car accident, they refuse to go. Left without options, Marcus and Kevin decide to pose as the sisters, transforming themselves from black men into rich European-American women.
- 5
Men in Black 3 (2012)
Barry SonnenfeldDP Bill PopeIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
After breaking out of LunarMax, a moon-based maximum security prison, Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) decides to go back in time and eliminate the person who arrested him - Agent K (Josh Brolin). When he does so, Agent J (Will Smith) realizes that the timeline has been changed and he too travels back to July 15, 1969, the day before Agent K is killed. After overcoming some disbelief, J manages to convince young K and others of just who he is and why he's there. With the help of Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a being who can see all timelines, they track Boris down. J also learns a secret, something old Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) had never told him.
- 6
The Nice Guys (2016)
Shane BlackDP Philippe RousselotIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Set against the backdrop of 1977 Los Angeles, The Nice Guys opens when single father and licensed PI Holland March (Gosling) is hired to investigate the apparent suicide of famous porn star Misty Mountains. As the trail leads him to track down a girl named Amelia (Qualley), he encounters less licensed and less hands-off private eye Jackson Healey (Russell Crowe) and his brass knuckles, both hired by the young hippie. However, the situation takes a turn for the worse when Amelia vanishes and it becomes apparent that March wasn't the only party interested. As both men are forced to team up, they'll have to take on a world filled with eccentric goons, strippers dressed as mermaids and even a possible government conspiracy.
- 7
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Edgar WrightDP Jess HallIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Top London cop PC Nicholas Angel is good. Too good. To stop the rest of his team looking bad, he is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford. He is paired with Danny Butterman, who endlessly questions him on the action lifestyle. Everything seems quiet for Angel until two actors are found decapitated. It is called an accident, but Angel won't accept that, especially when more and more people turn up dead. Angel and Danny clash with everyone while they try to uncover the truth behind the mystery of the apparent "accidents".
- 8
David ZuckerDP Robert M. StevensIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
A rerun of many of the gags from the television series Police Squad! (1982). An Airplane! (1980)-type spoof, this time with the an incompetent Lieutenant Frank Drebin, who always "gets his man". Visual gags come thick and fast, and it's impossible to catch them all with one viewing. The plot: Queen Elizabeth II of England is coming to town, and Vincent Ludwig has plans to assassinate her using a brainwashed baseball player.
What buddy cop films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a buddy cop frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — goatee is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- goatee8.7×
- handgun6.9×
- police officer4.7×
- palm tree4.0×
- tie3.5×
- suit jacket3.4×
- dress shirt3.4×
- mustache3.2×
How buddy cop films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate buddy cop from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 20%high keyvs 12% baseline
- 15%widevs 20% baseline
- 58%mediumvs 48% baseline
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,648 frames from 15 films carrying the buddy cop label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/buddy-cop
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