(1996)
2.5
Michael Costello
This exceedingly lame action-comedy, directed by frequent Spike Lee cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, is something of a male love story, one whose undercurrents of homoeroticism and homophobia threaten to overwhelm its swaggering masculinity. Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans star as a couple of none-too-believable criminal buddies whose relationship goes south when the latter reveals his true identity. The plot is a shakily built compendium of cop-movie staples, such as drug deals and shootouts, with little to hold it together but the relationship between the two friends, which is rife with gay innuendo. The script is also layered with a surfeit of childish, sexually anxious hostility, in the form of homophobic and disabled-baiting comedy. Adam Sandler, a performer whose stardom is one of cinema's most insoluble mysteries, is, as always, himself. On the other hand, Wayans, a genuinely gifted comedian, does his best with this tired material. The film's one positive quality -- Dickerson's excellent camerawork -- is, sadly, not enough to save it.
cast-crew for Bulletproof on AllMovie
Bulletproof (1996)
