Miles Logan is a high-class jewel thief who is just about to make the biggest score of his life, a seventeen million dollar diamond. But unfortunately, due in part to both incompetence and treachery in his gang, Miles has to stash the diamond in the heating duck of an incomplete building. Two years later he is back out of prison and hotfooting it to recover his diamond from the completed building, the problem is that the completed building is a police station...

Blue Streak (1999, 1 hr, 34 min, 06 sec) directed by Les Mayfield, who had previously helmed Flubber for Disney is a cop buddy film in the vein of Lethal Weapon, a combination of comedy and thriller.

Of course the film only really gets going when Miles (Martin Lawrence) decides that the only way to get at his diamond is to pose as a detective. It is here that the audience has to suspend any pretence of reality as he is accepted as a transfer into the precinct. Given a newbie partner Carlson (Luke Wilson), himself just transferred from the traffic division, whose naivety allows Mile to continue in his new role whilst trying to track his loot.

His fake documents give the impression that he is some form of super cop, so when his methods of solving crimes seem unconventional neither his partner nor his boss, Hardcastle (William Forsythe), think anything is wrong. In fact, the more unconventional he is the more impressed they become.

Things do not go all his way when Deacon (Peter Greene) discovers that Miles is after the diamond and, having failed to rip his former partner off during the robbery, decides to come after him, threatening to kill him if he does not hand over the diamond. The rest of the plot is fairly straightforward for this type of movie.

Taken on its own merits, and given the other films in this genre, Blue Streak isn’t a bad movie at all - and is certainly much better than the pretty awful Bad Boys (1995). That said, it isn’t a laugh-out-load experience, but an amusing way to pass your time. Not even David Chappelle seems to do more than stroke the silly bone as Tully.

Being a Blu-ray, you get a great picture with a TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack, both in English as well as five other European languages; subtitles come in nineteen European languages.

The disc is no slouch in the extras department with two substantial featurettes: Setting up for the Score (22 min, 09 sec) and HBO First look: Inside and Undercover (23 min, 02 sec). These are the sort of features where everyone talks about how everyone is great and what a great time they had making the movie - fun in their own way but the usual watch once stuff. There are also three music videos and some previews for other Blu-ray releases. The BD Live worked first time though there is still little of worth on the site. Ah well, it's early days.

So it's amusing and not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. Just don’t expect anything deep here.

6

Charles Packer