Movie #119 - Metro

"San Francisco's top police hostage negotiator is about to get more than he ever bargained for."

This movie was a bomb at the box office and is definitely not a good representation of Murphy's overall body of work. In his career, Eddie Murphy has made a number of bad movie projects, Metro is one of those films. Although I have not seen his most recent box office disaster, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, critics and fans alike have made that decision for me. However, I'll stick to reviewing this film, for I know Murphy at least deserves to be slaughtered for each film individually.

With Metro, the movie is way too long with too many slow spots in between. As shown by the trailer below, it was originally marketed as a comedic action film, similar to the Beverly Hills Cop franchise or even the Lethal Weapon franchise. However, this movie falls flat, from cast members to production quality - showing the level of expertise Murphy has had in choosing some of his major roles.

Metro was supposed to be one of those films that allowed Murphy to jump back and forth from goofy, comedic roles, to action-packed summer blockbusters. Instead, many blamed Metro for fans to forget the box office success of The Nutty Professor from 1996, and recall the disastrous films such as Vampire in Brooklyn and Beverly Hills Cop III shortly before and Holy Man, Life, and Bowfinger shortly afterwards.

Overall, if you cut out the crappy films, Murphy's career is filled with gems such as the Beverly Hills cop franchise sans #3, his voice over work with Mulan and the Shrek franchise, and his more recent work like Dreamgirls. However, everything always comes back to Pluto Nash, which is Murphy's version of Waterworld, the film that will forever follow Kevin Costner.

Unfortunately for Murphy, this film sees better acting from both Michael Wincott as the villain and Michael Rapaport as his rookie cop partner. However, as previously mentioned, this movie drags on and the violent, action scenes are misplaced throughout the duration of this film.

If you take my advice, do not see Metro as it falls in line with some of the poor decisions Murphy made in the mid-90's. If you want to see some stellar work, go through Murphy's earlier stuff or seek out episodes of his time on Saturday Night Live or even his stand-up work. I actually hope that he goes back to doing that, because he ranks up there in terms of delivery and quality of jokes. Maybe in the latter part of his career, he'll dust off the microphone, but I think he desperately wants to win his Oscar first... maybe a sequel to Pluto Nash just might be in order.

Just kidding!