On some level it's just nice to know Jay Leno and Pat Morita made a buddy cop movie in the 80s, even though it was possibly the lowest point in the screen careers for either of them.
Leno's character is goofball macho loser loud mouthed ladies man Detroit detective Tony Costas. Morita is bumbling lucky aloof wizened Tokyo detective Fuji Natsuo. I'm gonna be honest though, I was really just excited to see Soon Teck Oh play Natsuo's superior... I only knew his acting as the bad guy general from an old favorite, Steele Justice (I will write about that one on here at some point!). He's just as grumpy and likable as he is in that one.
The music is a hot 80s ST that makes you wanna work out with leg warmers on.
Ernie Hudson plays a supporting role as another cop, named Shortcut. A movie about this character would probably be better than this one.
There's oddly racist and sexist comments throughout the movie. I'm left wondering, is it just a sign of the times and that those comments were more acceptable in 1989? Is it Detroit culture? Or was the movie widely offensive back then? Dang, I wish I had some more context. One thing is for sure, some of the lines simply do not fly today and simply fall flat. When watching movies, it's important to reflect on the times when they were made and it sure can be weird sometimes. For Collision Course it at least bumps the rating up from PG to PG13, in my opinion.
Costas and Natsuo spend just as much time not getting along as they do teaming up. At many points it's more conflict than them trying to track down who's behind a murder and mobsters blackmailing the owner of a Detroit high end car company that stole an experimental Japanese motor.
Chris Sarandon plays a rich bad guy, who's mostly just a turd of a human being and owns a car company. He's not too threatening. If the two police could work together a little earlier, the movie could never have lasted to feature length. Even the gangsters involved don't seem all that competent. Eventually we see the gangsters add central to being antagonists. Although, the car company guy started it all and seems to just get away scot free.
Tom Noonan's character, Scully, is pretty much the only bad guy that does anything too threatening. But I'm thinking the only reason he can be taken seriously at all is due to his portrayal of Francis Dollarhyde in Manhunter (a pretty darn good movie, if you haven't seen it). But even he can't do much to get at the heros despite having an absolute arsenal at his disposal.
Sure there's some car chases, a shootout, and Costas even gets shot. The goons are worse shots than storm troopers, though. The climax is an awesome move by Natsuo that I'll look forward to every time I watch this movie. But the setup is pretty contrived, with the lead gangster determined to drive over the 2 cops. I mean, why'd he want to do that? To die with a super sweet kick through his windshield, apparently.
Everything mostly works out in the end and the movie seems set up for a potential sequel. It's probably a good thing that never came to be.
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