No Surrender Cinema: Metro
One of the biggest stories in all of entertainment last year was the resurgence of Eddie Murphy. The legendary comedian spent the last 2 decades making sporadic appearances in films, usually in family fare such as the Shrek films, or ill received oddball comedies like Norbit and Meet Dave. Now, thanks in part to a multimillion dollar deal with Netflix, Murphy is back in the spotlight. After having starred in Dolemite Is My Name for the streaming service, Murphy has put other projects into motion that fans of his past work are anxiously anticipating: a sequel to his hit film Coming To America hits theaters later this year, and the fourth installment of the Beverly Hills Cop series is said to be part of his Netflix deal. With Murphy making headlines in the entertainment industry once again, this edition of No Surrender Cinema seems like the perfect time to talk about what I’d consider to be his most forgotten film, 1997’s Metro.
As Eddie’s follow up to his his mega-hit comedy The Nutty Professor, Metro puts him back in the action game as Scott Roper, a hostage negotiator with the San Francisco Police Department. Murphy in the main role of a police officer might seem to some like an attempt to recapture the magic of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, but to his credit the character of Roper is much less of a loose cannon than Foley was. In the opening scene, when the unstable Earl (Donal Logue) takes the patrons and staff of a bank hostage, Roper does his best to reason with him until he’s ultimately forced to wound him in order to set everyone free. Though he treats his role of a hostage negotiator seriously, Roper is not without his flaws. Gambling appears to be the biggest outlet for his stress, which is made pretty clear when his car is repossessed minutes after he’s just rescued a dozen people from crazy Earl! It’s also caused a rift between himself and Veronica (Carmen Ejogo), his girlfriend. Luckily for Scott, his old partner Sam (Art Evans) is willing to let Scott air his grievances, whether it be his hatred of Ronnie’s new baseball player boyfriend, or the fact that the only car he’s able to swindle from the police impound lot closely resembles Fred Sanford’s red truck.
As it turns out, Sam has been investigating jewel theft that leads him to believe that Michael Korda (Michael Wincott, brother of BPA favorite Jeff) is the man he’s looking for. When Sam has Scott take him to Korda’s apartment so that he can question him, the encounter results in Sam being murdered and Korda on the run. Scott is drawn to the scene after hearing the screams of a tenant, and makes the grisly discovery of his friends body. An attempt to catch Korda fails, and now Roper has to add “dead best friend” to the list of crap that life keeps piling on him. An exhausted and exasperated Scott shows up at Ronnie’s door asking to see “Troy” (the verbal exchange would have you believing they have a son together, but Troy is actually their dog), and although she’s aware of what’s happened in the hours prior to this, she’s skeptical of Scott’s true intentions. When Veronica’s baseball player boyfriend shows up, Scott sheepishly retreats, having disrupted her evening for long enough.
Naturally, Roper’s superiors won’t allow him anywhere near the case of Sam’s murder, so he’s given a new assignment; train SWAT team wunderkind Kevin McCall (Michael Rappaport) to be a hostage negotiator. It’s your typical tense introduction straight out of every buddy cop film, just so that we can set up the odd couple dynamic; straight laced McCall and streetwise Roper. When he’s not having McCall use his head to determine how to resolve a situation without force, he’s taking him to the track so that he can lay some money down on the horses. The horse race scene is one of the few times in Metro that we get a taste of the old Murphy as he unleashes a verbal barrage on the jockey for apparently losing the race (and his bet), then tries to hustle a few hundred out of McCall when the pair find out that their horse has actually won. It’s a welcome dose of levity that shows Murphy can still utilize the boyish charm he had way back on SNL and in films like Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places even when he’s swimming in more serious water.
As fate would have it for Roper, he’s called to a hostage situation which turns out to be perpetrated by none other than the man he’s after. It turns out that Korda has decided to rob this particular store so that he can fence the jewels and skip town, and thanks to his mask and the alias he’s using, Roper has no idea that he’s Korda. After being handed an ear cut off of one of the hostages, Scott knows that he’s got to act fast before something worse happens. It’s evident that Roper’s “cooler heads prevail” beliefs won’t be working with this psychopath, and his captain doesn’t have much confidence in everything getting wrapped up nicely with a bow around it either. It turns out he’s right, because Korda has his hostages create a smoke screen with fire extinguishers, places his mask on one of the hostages, and tries to slip out with the civilians, unmasked. Roper recognizes Korda instantly, but it’s too late for the poor guy who Korda forced to impersonate him, because SWAT takes him out. Roper and McCall spring into action to ruin Korda’s escape plan, and a chase ensues throughout the streets of San Francisco. The cat and mouse game climaxes on a runaway cable car, and our hero cops are forced to take their eyes off of Korda in order to stop the car from crashing into a crowd of onlookers. Roper does manage to catch up to Korda in a nearby parking garage and has him dead to rights, but McCall intervenes right before Scott decides to go all “eye for an eye” on him.
With Korda is serving hard time, everything is coming up roses for Roper. He reunites with Veronica, courtesy of her mac and cheese craving. He continues to rotate between training McCall and busting his balls, often doing both at the same time. Korda, on the other hand, is getting jumpy behind bars, and he orders his cousin Clarence (who was the one that inadvertently put Sam on Korda’s trail in the first place) to go after Veronica. I’m assuming his knowledge of their relationship is courtesy of some jailhouse intel, because Korda had never encountered Roper with Veronica before (and their reunion happened about five minutes ago in movie time). Clarence, a simple minded petty crook, doesn’t want to add murder to his resume, but Korda presses on him to make good for his screw ups. Roper makes it home just as Clarence is about to off his lady love, and the struggle spills out into the street where Clarence gets run down by a passing car. Angered by the attempt on Veronica’s life, Roper visits Korda in jail to let him know that Clarence is dead and any more attacks will be met with an equivalent amount of justice. This pushes the psycho to the edge, and Korda escapes prison so that he can personally gain his revenge on Roper. Korda takes Veronica captive, and lures Scott into a final showdown where he’s going to have to put his normal M.O. aside and play by his rules.
Metro is a fun entry among the flood of 90’s action movies, though that’s not to say it doesn’t have flaws. I felt that Rapaport was underutilized here, and the whole partner dynamic came off like filler. I also felt like the Scott and Veronica reconciliation was rushed along solely to be able to have a damsel in distress for the film’s final act. Small grievances aside, I enjoyed Metro very much and it’s earned a spot among my favorite “rewatchable” films. Sure, it’s not as bombastic as Bad Boys, but Eddie Murphy deserves credit for going in the opposite direction of his prior successes to try his hand at being a hero cop. Topping him here though is Michael Wincott as the cold-blooded killer Michael Korda, and his portrayal here felt similar at times to Denis Leary’s role of drug lord Fallon in Judgment Night. I really enjoyed him here, because his scene chewing villainy was top notch.
As we now know, Metro’s lack of success in theaters sent Eddie in the opposite direction of the action genre, and he would spend the next two decades reinventing himself as a leading man in Disney films and providing Donkey’s voice in the Shrek franchise. Metro probably won’t be mentioned much on his comeback tour either, but while he’s busy getting Beverly Hills Cop IV I encourage you all to see this hidden gem for yourself. It’s currently in rotation on the HBO/Cinemax channels and On Demand service, and those who still show their support for tangible media can find it fairly cheap on DVD. Of all the things that Eddie Murphy has done in his career, this is an prime example of something that doesn’t get the amount of love that it should.
