The buddy cop action/comedy subgenre has largely gone the way of the rom-com, and I’m not sure why. It’s a tried-and-true formula, which hit its zenith back in the ’80s and ’90s with classics like 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, and Lethal Weapon. Save for the stray legacy sequels such as Bad Boys: Ride or Die; it’s just something that you don’t see too often anymore. Stars Jack Quaid and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are trying to bring the buddy cop flick back in the indie thriller Neighborhood Watch, written by Sean Farley and directed by Duncan Skiles.
The story follows Quaid as the mentally unstable Simon McNally, a man who witnesses a woman being thrown into the back of a van and just wants to do something about it. McNally naturally goes to the police first, but Detective Glover (Cecile Cubiló) looks up his record and decides that he’s unreliable. That’s where cantankerous neighbor Ed Deerman, a retired security guard, (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) comes in. After some convincing by McNally, the odd couple go on an adventure to try to save the girl.
The story of Neighborhood Watch is mostly straightforward, and why mess with something that works? Simon is a sympathetic character as someone who struggles just to live due to hearing voices and seeing visions that he takes some strong medication for, while sometimes struggling to speak with confusing “word salads” coming out. A scene early on shows him struggling with these hindrances during a job interview, and you can’t help but feel for the guy. Simon’s sister DeeDee (Malin Akerman) is a nursing student and beautician who is struggling to stay afloat as his caretaker, before she gets mixed up in it all.
“…a man who witnesses a woman being thrown into the back of a van…”
I love that Morgan doesn’t just play a strait-laced character like so many of these buddy cop films would do in order to balance out Quaid’s Simon. Ed has his own quirks (such as being addicted to video poker and labeled by a co-worker as a “never was”) and likes to antagonize Simon by humorously calling him off-color names such as “screw loose”, but yet you can still feel the empathy that he has for the character. The chemistry between the two leads is essential to the success of a buddy film like this, and they pull it off swimmingly.
Quaid is on fire lately with the success of The Boys and movies like Companion and Novocaine, all coming out this year. Neighborhood Watch is a small budget, independent film, so you can’t expect the insane action sequences out of some like the Bad Boys franchise. What you can count on is two fantastic actors who are at the top of their game, playing off one another to compelling results. I could watch them all day and in sequels (fingers crossed), which also speaks to the writing and directing.
There’s a certain comfort in a movie delivering what you expect out of it. If you’re intrigued by watching Jack Quaid and Jeffrey Dean Morgan come together to solve a mystery, then Neighborhood Watch will not disappoint. When you get a comedic pair together like Laurel and Hardy, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, or Jack Quaid and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, it’s timeless.
"…timeless."
