Armed and Dangerous (1986)

Sorry, this movie sucks

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

hyped garbage

Good movie but grossly overrated

John Candy. Eugene Levy, Meg Ryan, Robert Loggia and Kenneth McMillan star in this 1986 action-comedy. The late, Candy (Summer Rental) plays ex-cop, Frank Dooley and Levy (Splash) plays unfit lawyer, Norman Kane who team up together after getting jobs as security guards. Soon, they get into action and mishaps when discovering a criminal conspiracy involving their Captain, Clarence O'Connell (McMillian) and Union President, Michael Carlino (Loggia). Ryan (Top Gun) plays O'Connell's daughter, Maggie Cavanagh who finds romance with Norman and Tony Burton (Rocky) also appears briefly as Cappy, Frank's friend & retired thief. I grew up watching this and always enjoyed it. I think it's underrated and Candy & Levy were great together. I recommend this good 80's action-comedy.

John Candy is not one of the all time great actors, but he is memorable in his own way. His characters tend to be cute, cuddly, and sometimes simply clumsy. His characters were enjoyable and his movies entertaining. Unfortunately, now that he is dead, others try to imitate his style of acting and just don't seem to come close. Everybody is an original and that goes just as true for John Candy as it does for everybody else. Armed and Dangerous is about a police officer, Dooley (John Candy) who catches a couple of crooked cops stealing television sets, but is framed instead. Another character, a hopeless lawyer, is encouraged by a judge to quit law and find another career, so they both become private security guards. As guards they are forced to join a union and discover that this union is conducting some very illicit business, including staging robberies when the security guards are off duty. Dooley and the ex-lawyer are caught by this scam and decide to expose the crooks. This movie is an anti-union movie. In every part of the movie, the union is portrayed in a very bad light. The union bosses are all crooks and the cast is made up of very thuggish looking characters. The boss is corrupt and the union is more concerned with making money for themselves than for looking after the workers. When confronted with a lawyer who asks too many questions, they ban the lawyer from the meetings so that they might continue with their crooked schemes. The purpose of this movie seems to reinforce in our minds that unions are evil and that they should be disbanded. Americans have always hated unions because they are too left and infringe on the right of the individual to make money. The movie ignores that facet of the union that protects the worker though. Instead we are constantly forced to see the evil side of the union and not the good side. It is an entertaining movie with its share of comedy. Armed and Dangerous is a movie that John Candy fans will appreciate, and though I do not consider myself a devout fan, I do not mind him. In another way this movie seems to be like Police Academy, except it does not focus on the training but rather the work.

I'm a fan of the old SCTV show from the late 70's and early 80's and John Candy was a major reason why. He was given very funny off the wall characters and was simply hilarious. Unfortunately he could not get these roles to play in the movies. Time after time I was disappointed by the mediocre movies in which he was almost playing the "straight" role instead of the funny guy. "Armed and Dangerous" rarely tries to use John's comedic abilities, or that of Harold Ramis, for that matter. It is simply a very predictable cops and robbers type of movie. If you are a John Candy or Harold Ramis fan the movie is watchable, just don't expect to laugh much.

Armed and DangerousWell, here's another cop-buddy comedy from the eighties with a weird sense of humor: `Armed and Dangerous.' It features old SCTV Canadian buddies John Candy and Eugene Levy in one of their most forgettable roles. John Candy plays Frank Dooley, a policeman who, one day, finds some corrupt cops stealing some TVs. Unfortunately for Dooley, the tables are turned when he confronts them and gets the blame, causing him to lose his badge and suffer.Eugene Levy plays Norman Kane: a bumbling, inept lawyer who we feel got his job because he either had extremely rich parents, or just made some fake certificates to prove he is a lawyer. One day while defending a client, Norman realizes that he is about to lose the case. The man he represents is a psycho, who will almost surely kill him after he gets out of jail. So, Norman makes a deal with the court judge; the judge hates Norman, so he tells him that he will put the psycho behind bars forever if Norman quits his job, because he is a `Disgrace to lawyers.' And that's exactly what Norman does. He quits his job.So now both men decide to enter the `Watchdog Security' program, where they meet each other for the first time, as well as the daughter of Watchdog president, Maggie Cavanaugh (Meg Ryan). Candy and Levy are later assigned night watch at an old factory, and unfortunately for the two men, they have no idea that something more than meets the eye is going on; if they wish to keep their job, they must discover the truth and reveal it.John Candy is great as Frank Dooley. I thought his character would be the bumbling one, but in fact, Dooley is smart, and Levy's character Norman is the stupid one. Dooley's motivation behind it all is that he wants his respect as an officer back; he took the blame once, and he wants to get his badge back.Eugene Levy is endearingly dumb as Norman, a guy we all find a place for in our hearts. He obviously has a crush on Ryan's character, but is not as persistent or cocky as Dooley is; he just can't muster up enough guts to ask her out. However, he is not completely stupid. He isn't the kind of character that talks with a lisp and has crossed eyes. He is just…Eugene Levy.Despite the two comedians' great performances, however, the film is simply average. The gags become old after a while, and the ending is quite ridiculous and not even fun. Candy and Levy try their best at delivering laughs, but fail miserably, mainly because the script is so awful and the direction wonders around aimlessly searching for the right direction.The beginning/first half of the film is, actually, quite funny, but eventually, after the men join Watchdog Security, the film suffers from lack of dialogue and lack of direction; director Mark L. Lester must have lost the film's script during filming, because I find it hard to believe anything so average and basic could be coughed up by co-writer Harold Ramis.There are some laugh-out-loud sequences in `Armed and Dangerous,' but only a few in the beginning. The film just withers away into a laugh-free zone after the first act, and the ending is just plain typical of an eighties cop-buddy film: high speed chases, stunts, and explosions, topped off by a corny, stereotypical ending that has the audience cowering in their seats.No matter how much I love John Candy as an actor, I simply can't muster up enough to recommend this film. The film's main problem is its lack of intelligence, humor, and wit, as well as containing some boring and typical dialogue expected from a film like `Police Academy,' not a film with John Candy and Eugene Levy. It is quite a tragic comedy, and is the exact definition of `average.' I've seen much worse, but nevertheless, average is average. Perhaps you should see it only for a glimpse of Meg Ryan's early career, but that's pushing it. My summary: `Armed and Dangerous' is `Harming and Ridiculous.'2/5 stars –John Ulmer