Cop Out is a dreadful film. Ostensibly a buddy movie, an action-comedy about two longtime NYPD partners, it is neither funny nor particularly action-packed. Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan have very little on-screen chemistry, with Willis delivering one of the customarily bored performances that have blighted his recent cinematic output. Morgan, so hilarious on Tina Fey's 30 Rock television show, simply came across as irritating, which isn't ideal considering he was tasked with delivering much of the film's 'comedy'. The only actor who escaped with any credit was Seann William Scott, who raised a few chuckles in a fairly minor role as a small-time hood. Cop Out is the only one of Smith's directorial efforts for which he did not also write the script, and it shows. There is a disconnect between his direction as a studio's 'hired gun' and the Kevin Smith who created all his other films from the ground up. The behind the scenes stories that have since emerged about the production are inarguably more interesting than the movie itself, with Smith going on record for a 2011 podcast that Bruce Willis was extremely difficult to work with, saying that "were it not for Tracy, I might have either killed myself or someone else in the making of Cop Out". Other sources connected with the film fired back that Smith smoked far too much marijuana during filming and barely interacted with the actors.
