Matt McCoy

Two LAPD policemen, Hank Rafferty (Steve Zahn) and Charlie Reed (Timothy Busfield), investigate a warehouse heist and discover a gang of thieves, one of whom kills Charlie before they escape. Hank had noticed the tattoo on the killer's arm, before he escaped with the rest of his gang. Meanwhile, Earl Montgomery's (Martin Lawrence) lifelong dream to become a police officer is thwarted when he flunks police academy for accidentally causing an explosion. Earl is racist and arrogant. He thinks he is better than everyone and when challenged by the instructor, he ends up taking the drill far too seriously, cuffing the instructor by jumping from his car, which then drives into barrels of gasoline, which explodes. After Hank receives a warning from Detective Frank McDuff (Colm Feore) after interfering with the investigation of Charlie's death (Mcduff wanted Hank to stay away as the warehouse was storing $800K of computer chips, which are now gone, making this a national security matter), he meets Earl when Hank notices him trying to get into his car after locking his keys inside. When Hank questions Earl, Earl race-baits and insults Hank to the point of getting himself arrested. A bumblebee comes along to which Earl is allergic, causing him to panic. Hank tries to save Earl by shooing away the bee. From afar, it appears as if Hank is brutalizing Earl when he is actually attempting to shoo the bee away by swatting it with his baton; a man catches the incident on videotape. Because of the incriminating evidence and a spiteful Earl lying about the accused brutalizing, Hank is terminated from the police force and charged with aggravated assault against Earl. He is sentenced to six months in prison. Hank is hated by all the blacks in prison, even before he steps foot inside the prison, so he assaults a prison guard regularly and spends the entire 6 months in solitary confinement. After being released, Hank takes a job as a security guard and continues investigating Charlie's death. Noticing an alarm being tripped at a soda warehouse, Hank goes to investigate. Earl, who is working for the same security company, is on duty at the warehouse but is slacking off. Hank interrupts the heist, and a gunfight erupts with the thugs, during which Hank and Earl cross paths again. The two give chase to the thieves but are pulled over by the police for speeding. One of the thieves had dropped a cell phone. Hank calls the number, and it belongs to the van rental company. They figure that the guys who rented the van are headed to Mexico in a semi-trailer. Inside the truck (they get in when they find the truck at a rest stop), Hank and Earl find the thieves' van. Earl tries to hot-wire the van but accidentally triggers the alarm, alerting the thieves. After a brief shootout, Hank and Earl drive the van out of the truck and escape. Inside the van are what look like ordinary beer kegs; Hank has them examined at a foundry, where they learn that the kegs are actually made of an atomic aerospace alloy, which is worth millions. Hank takes the van and the kegs to the house of his ex-girlfriend, Denise (Robinne Lee). They broke up after Hank was arrested, and Hank asks Earl to tell Denise the truth about the "assault". Earl promises, but when he sees that Denise is an attractive black woman, he breaks his promise and starts hitting on her, playing the victim again. This causes another fight between them, and Denise kicks both of them out. After a heated argument, Hank punches Earl in the face, before storming off. Later, the pair is cornered by police, learning that they are suspects in the earlier shootout (on the highway inside the trailer truck, but no cops knew that they were ever inside the trailer truck). They escape and Hank realizes that the thieves must have an inside man in the police department. That night, the pair trace the van's owner to an address and stake out the place, but Earl rushes inside on his own and is confronted by the thieves. Hank arrives just as Earl is shot in the leg, and before escaping, he recognizes one of the thieves, Nash (Eric Roberts), as Charlie's murderer (from the tattoo on his wrist). When Hank takes Earl to Denise to get his wound treated (which turns out to be simply a graze), a bee flies into the house and Earl runs for cover, making Denise realize that Hank's story about the "assault" on Earl was actually true while revealing that Earl is actually the racist. She slaps Earl for lying and reconciles with Hank. Based on seeing the address on Nash's pager, they follow him to a meeting at a yacht club and witness him talking to McDuff, who is revealed to be Nash's inside man. Hank and Earl share everything they know with Hank's former boss, Lieutenant Washington (Bill Duke). Washington tells them that an year ago $7MM worth of space alloy was stolen from an aerospace company. The guys melted it into beer kegs to smuggle it out, when FBI got a tip. But the insider moved first to secure the stuff, before the FBI could get there. They pretend to approach McDuff, offering to sell him back the "beer kegs" for $1 million. However, Nash learns about their plans (his guys overheard the conversation between Washington and Hank & Earl) and takes Washington hostage first. During the confrontation the next day, Earl and Hank meet with McDuff, Nash, and their men near the coast, rescuing Washington and accidentally starting a shootout, but the trio manage to kill or apprehend most of Nash's gang, including McDuff. Hank is shot, but he survives and kills Nash by dropping a nearby crane's lifting hook onto an unstable slab of rock that Nash is standing on, catapulting him into the ocean, avenging Charlie's death. Six more months later, in honor of their heroic actions, Hank is reinstated in the LAPD and Earl is admitted to the force, and they are made partners. The two encounter a situation similar to where they met, in which a man is apparently locked out of his car. Earl helps the man but learns that he is actually a thief. He successfully stops the thief by shooting at the car, but the vehicle explodes soon after.

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