48 Hrs (1982)

When a brutal gunfight leaves his partner dead, San Francisco cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) is hellbent on bringing down the killers, escaped convicts Albert Ganz (James Remar) and Billy Bear (Sonny Landham).

Convincing his boss to let him pursue the case alone, the maverick detective decides to spring one of the criminals' associates, fast-talking wheeler-dealer Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), from prison. As Ganz and Bear hunt down $500,000 owed to them from a previous job, kidnapping the girlfriend of one of their former associates in the process, Cates has just two days to corral Hammond into helping him track them down. Clashing from the second they lay eyes on one another, the gruff, booze-soaked cop and the smart, streetwise hood slowly realise that they are going to have to work together to get what they want.

Often cited as the original 'buddy cop' movie - the mismatched crime-fighting partner genre that would become a staple of 80s Hollywood - 48 Hrs also marked Murphy's career-making movie debut. His lightning-fast verbal sparring with Nolte is still searingly brilliant nearly 30 years later and a reminder of just how potent he was at the peak of his powers. Nolte also makes a fine foil as the seminal hard-living maverick cop, an archetype that would be endlessly aped in the coming decade, becoming as much a cliché as furious police captains and cars driving through fruit stalls in high-speed chases. The grit Nolte brings to Cates sets his performance apart from subsequent copies, as does the suitably grimy feel that director Walter Hill brings to the squabbling duo's trawl through the San Francisco underworld in this winning mix of hard-boiled action and cuss-laden comedy.