I had never seen this, but what a great road movie. And what a cast, starting with the lead (De Niro) down to all the other roles. Some are "minor" I reckon, but even seeing someone like one of the Beverly Hills Cop "sidekicks" in this movie is quite great. And I don't mean any offense by that, because the character he portrays here is so very different from the earnest cop he plays opposite Eddie Murphy to elevate his comedy.

So yes the actors are great, but it's also a real fun script and story you get to see here. A prime example of a good cop and buddy movie right here. Chemistry is through the roof and it's believable as far as the rules of the movie allow us to connect and suspend our disbelief.

Way too much objectionable language is the only fault of this otherwise extremely-entertaining film that is justifiably popular.

Humor is what makes this "crime film" stand out as tough guys Robert De Niro, Joe Pantoliano, John Ashton, Dennis Farina and others provide a lot of laughs as not-so-tough guy Charles Grodin is escorted from New York to Los Angeles to face retribution from a mob boss.

The dialog between Grodin and his bounty hunter captive De Niro, is terrific all the way through. The soundtrack, featuring the guitar of Ry Cooder, also is outstanding and adds to the fun of this film.

The capper to this likable story is the satisfying ending, which almost everyone seems to like.

Maybe time has been good to this film, or action comedies just aren't all that intelligent anymore. When I first saw this film back in the late 80's, I gave it a mediocre rating, but in reacessing it have moved it up a few notches to a good, if not great, rating. The performances of the two stars, Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, have really stood the test of time, and if the script is not perfect, their delivery of the lines are. DeNiro is an FBI agent who is taking Grodin, wanted for federal crimes, cross country, and it's soon obvious that other FBI agents are after Grodin for their own reasons. That puts DeNiro's life in jeopardy, and gives a different take on the buddy/buddy film that Hope and Crosby made popular in the 1940's, but could be traced back to Durante and Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Wheeler and Wolsey in the 1930's, if not as far back as the silent era.

The two stars work well together, and it's nice to see Grodin cast against type. His character is still a bit uptight, criticizing DeNiro for smoking and other bad habits, but much more flip than he was in other films. Fortunately this rises above big budget films like "Ishtar" or lighter comedies featuring former "Saturday Night Live" actors, and as the duo's situation gets more serious, they are forced to work together to survive to the end, and then going cross-country, that takes them into some fascinating locations that are rarely seen on screen. Yaphet Kotto is the FBI nemesis out to eliminate them, and after spending a lot of time wondering why, after a while I just stopped caring about that and enjoying the film for its non-stop fun.

So while I may like this a bit more than I did before, I'm still not praising it like others did back in 1988 when it was a huge hit. The ending is a male variation of "Thelma abd Louise" on a lighter scale several years before that film was released to great acclaim. The film is definitely a bit overly long, at least two bags of popcorn in length, and it is definitely more character-driven than other films of this nature because it focuses mainly on De Niro and Grodin. There are some nice minor roles here and there and a few familiar faces (if not names),and by the time everything begins to wrap up, there's the conflicting feeling that it should have wrapped up a long time before yet the feeling that it could have gone on for another 20 minutes or so. I rarely change my ratings on films I saw years begore, so this one's a bit of a surprise in giving it another chance.