The Other Guys

Director/co-writer Adam McKay’s satire of the buddy cop genre works best early, with Dwayne Johnson and Sam Jackson playing a super-cop duo going to absurd lengths to bring down a suspect. Then the film shifts to Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg’s characters, the titular “other guys” who stumble upon an enormous white-collar conspiracy. Both are good in their respective roles, and Michael Keaton shines as their chief, but in telling a serious story, McKay can’t falls into the genre trappings he earlier satirized, making me long for the opening’s absurdism.