Best movie of this year hands down!

Perfect cast and a good story

Boring

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Police Officer Alex Kearney is a keen, by the book cop who's happy with his beat in a nice part of Philadelphia. Unfortunately his adherence to the rules lands him in trouble with his chiefs after he tries to arrest an an important businessman with long standing police connections. When his side of the story is not believed, he is given the choice of suspension or a transfer downtown. Choosing the transfer, Kearney isn't quite prepared for how dangerous and crime filled downtown is. Worse still, his new tough no nonsense partner positively hates him!It's churlish to suggest that Downtown is merely a cash in of the buddy buddy inter racial cop movies, that, as we know, were made viable entertaining fare by the likes of Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop. Starring Forest Whitaker (Dennis Curren) and Anthony Edwards {Alex Kearney}, Downtown is as much about a fish out of water scenario than it is polar opposite cops working together. With both things dovetailing together to create an engaging actioner that's worth the time of those who are stuck for a rental one evening. Suffering a touch in the last finale due to the inevitable mawkish character strand, IE:just why is Curren so miserable and mean,? while a stronger villain than David Clennon's barely grumpy Jerome Sweet would have helped enormously. But with some genuinely funny sequences, and some well staged action set pieces, Downtown achieves most of the requisites set down for the action/comedy genre. Nice support comes from Joe Pantoliano as a bizarre looking hit-man and Penelope Ann Miller as Kearney's fraught girlfriend, Lori Mitchell. 6.5/10

"Downtown" is a box office crash & burn from 1990. Basically it is yet another unsuccessful attempt to follow-up on the success of "Beverly Hills Cop" (without the benefit of Eddie Murphy). These inter-racial, buddy picture, cop movie, comedy-action features simply don't work without a talented comic and Anthony Edwards of "Revenge of the Nerds" fame is only mildly funny. Add to this a more serious group of themes than Murphy had to deal with and the incongruity of mixing these conflicting genres makes the whole a lot less than the sum of its parts. Yet "Downtown" is more entertaining than its "bomb at the box office" reputation would lead you to believe. The production design, filming, and editing are first class. Although the action scenes are unconvincing, this is due more to lamely inserted comedy elements than cheap staging. Much is genuinely embarrassing such as when a PCP abuser holds a little girl hostage, with a gun to her head, and the subtext lamely plays the scene for laughs. What genius thought that scene would work? And they wonder why these things lose money? In this exercise in schizoid film-making, Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker are the standard odd couple partnering up to solve the murder of Edwards' former partner. Nerd boy Alex (Edwards) in his worst scenes listens to Beach Boys music and in his best scenes is paired with his girlfriend (Penelope Ann Miller). Alex is a suburban patrolman who has been banished to the worst downtown Philly division because of a confrontation with a slimy bigwig (unconvincingly overplayed by David Clennon). Dennis (Whitaker) is a detective with a lot of baggage that makes it difficult for him to warm up to Alex.But Alex and Dennis eventually bond (big surprise) and Whitaker turns in a pretty good performance (much too good for this material). Whitaker and Miller assist the marginally talented but generally likable Edwards enough that it is possible for the average viewer to suspend disbelief most of the time and actually get into the story. Just be prepared for a lot of extremely lame moments that would have been more entertaining had the editor relegated them to his deleted scenes bin. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

I'm just watching this movie and I think it's great. One question, Kearney greets the bus driver on his commute "Downtown" as "Tim." I only caught a brief glimpse, but I think the driver is played by Tim Roth. Can anyone confirm?Anthony Edward's performance, in my opinion, is very much like Judge Reinhold in Beverley Hills Cop. In fact I think the whole movie has a Beverley Hills Cop feel to it, albeit without the knockout performance of Eddie Murphy. Forest Whitaker is good in this movie, as usual a very skilled performance,and I wish his character was given a little more emphasis and depth.All in all a great movie and a credit to the Buddy Cop genre.

Here is another of my personal favourites 80's comedies. A solid production with a marvellous Anthony Edwards and a bad-ass Forest Whitaker. Lots of the scenes have an unique Choreography.A good surprise for 80's fans!!