“With all due respect, fuck you, sir.” — Marcus Fenix
Few video game protagonists carry the weight of a dying world on their shoulders quite like Marcus Fenix, the granite-jawed soldier of Gears of War. At first glance, he seems deliberately unremarkable: a muscled, armor-plated space marine who speaks in growls and commands with grunts. Yet this surface-level stoicism is precisely what makes him so compelling. Marcus rejects the quippy, one-liner-spouting action hero archetype popularized by the early 2000s. Instead, he embodies a weary, bone-deep authenticity. He is a man who has lost everything—his father, his freedom, and his faith in authority—and his silence speaks louder than any monologue. That authenticity is the bedrock of his charisma; he does not perform heroism, he simply endures.
What elevates Marcus beyond a simple “tough guy” is his profound, unspoken loyalty. His defining act before the first game even begins—abandoning his post to rescue his father, which lands him in a military prison—immediately establishes his moral code: duty to family over duty to order. Throughout the trilogy, this loyalty extends to his squad, particularly his best friend, Dominic Santiago. The chemistry between Marcus and Dom is never overstated; it lives in shared glances, battlefield tactics, and the quiet understanding of two men who have bled together for over a decade. When Dom sacrifices himself in Gears of War 3, Marcus’s single, devastated howl is one of the most emotionally raw moments in gaming history. That grief is charismatic because it is earned—it shows that beneath the armor is a heart capable of being shattered.
Marcus also subverts the typical “chosen one” narrative. He is not a prophesied savior or a supernatural being; he is a skilled, broken soldier who keeps fighting because stopping means admitting that everyone who died did so for nothing. His charisma stems from his everyman fatalism, magnified by a world of grotesque monsters. While other heroes might inspire with rousing speeches, Marcus inspires by example. He is always the first through the breach, the last to retreat, and he never asks his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. This quiet, grindstone leadership is deeply appealing in an era saturated with narcissistic antiheroes. He earns respect not through charm, but through competence and sacrifice.
Moreover, the game’s design reinforces his character. The Lancer rifle with its chainsaw bayonet is an extension of Marcus’s personality: brutal, efficient, and unwilling to pretend war is clean. His heavy, lumbering movement in the early games conveys exhaustion, as if every step is a battle against despair. The “active reload” mechanic, which rewards precise timing, mirrors Marcus’s own discipline—a man who cannot afford to waste a single bullet or moment. Even his trademark bandana and scruff are practical, not stylish. Every element of his visual and mechanical design supports a man who has long abandoned vanity. This cohesion between gameplay and character makes his rare moments of dry humor—like his deadpan “Nice” after a brutal execution—feel like earned releases of tension rather than forced wit.
In the end, Marcus Fenix is charismatic because he respects the gravity of his world. He doesn’t crack jokes while Locusts tear his comrades apart; he doesn’t pause for dramatic monologues as cities fall. Instead, he offers something rarer: the quiet dignity of a man who keeps moving forward when hope is a luxury. In the later games, including Gears 5, we see him as an older, scarred father figure to JD Fenix, still struggling with the same burdens of command and love. That continuity of pain and perseverance is what solidifies him as an icon. Marcus Fenix reminds us that heroism is not about flash or wit—it is about being the rock others can hold onto when the world is flooding, even if that rock is too tired to speak.
This is from the haunting soundtrack to the Quantic Dream video game, Heavy Rain. This short piece of music captures the sad feel of the game and the madness of the Origami Killer. This score was compared by the late Normand Corbeil, who also worked in film and television. He’s probably best remembered for scoring the 2009 reboot of V.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve played Heavy Rain. I’ve gotten the good ending but really, it’s the bad endings that stick with you.
The opening of David Cage’s video game, Detroit: Become Human, always gets me in the mood to either put down the machines or overthrow the humans. When I first played this game, my decisions led to Connor going over the roof with the deviant android. I was worried that the game had ended before it had even began but luckily, it turned out there was always a replacement Connor.
As for Kara being purchased by Todd and being driven to her new home, it is one of the strongest cut-scenes that I’ve ever seen. I know some players who have decided not to kill Todd while escaping his home because they think he’ll turn over a new leaf if and when he shows up in the game later. Don’t count on it.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today is the birthday of video game director, David Cage. Though Cage is a controversial figure, I’ve always enjoyed his games. Detroit: Become Human is one of the most replayable films that I’ve ever come across. (During the COVID lockdowns, I discovered how much fun it was to overthrow human society.) Heavy Rain’s mystery was intriguing and any player who says he didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment after winning the sex scene minigame is lying.
Here are four shots from four games!
Fahrenheit (2005, directed by David Cage)
Heavy Rain (2010, directed by David Cage)
Beyond: Two Souls (2013, directed by David Cage)
Detroit: Become Human (2018, directed by David Cage)
This cover of Carly Simon’s best-known song comes from Faster Pussycat. The song was recorded for a compilation album celebrating Elektra’s 40-year anniversary.
Director Rocky Schenck is still active today. He has directed videos for Adele, Robert Plant, Allison Krause, Van Halen, Alice In Chains, and many others.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!
This week, two opponents from the past return.
Episode 5.22 “A Threat of War”
(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on March 21st, 1982)
When Ponch and Baker try to break up a fight between a group of white kids and a group of Spanish kids, they discover that the white gang is being led by their old foe, Billy Rogers (Danny Bonaduce). Billy still knows karate and his attitude has gotten even worse.
Suddenly, another old foe shows up. Andy Macedon (Lewis Van Bergen) says that he’s no longer into the gang life and he’s trying to bring peace to the old neighborhood. Ponch is skeptical so Andy challenges him to a karate match at the youth center.
Everyone tells Ponch that he shouldn’t show up for the fight but Ponch does show up. Ponch back down from a fight? No way. There’s one thing that you can always count on when it comes to CHiPs in its fifth season. Baker might still occasionally get to do something heroic but, for the most part, this is now The Ponch Show. Baker gets to write tickets and occasionally tell people to slow down on the highway. Ponch is the one who gets to sing, dance, flirt, skydive, and just about every other cool thing you could do in California in the 80s. Needless to say, when the show needs someone to take part in a karate match, Ponch is the one who is going to be donning his black belt.
As for the match itself, Ponch and Andy fight each other to a draw and then they shake hands, showing that peace can be achieved. It turns out that Andy was telling the truth! He has reformed! However, Billy Rogers is a lost cause. Not even seeing Ponch and Andy clasping hands is enough to keep him from pursuing the gang life. It would be a sad story if not for the fact that Billy is played by Danny Bonaduce. Instead, it’s just kind of campy.
Considering that this episode revolved around karate, it should have been more exciting. Instead, Estrada just smiled a lot and the episode end up neutering Andy Macedon, one of the best villains that the show ever had. The threat of war was not worth the cost.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!
This week, David Abrams gets his time in the spotlight.
Episode 1.6 “Abrams For The Defense”
(Dir by Aaron Lipstadt, originally aired on October 14th, 1986)
In the slums of Chicago, Hector Lincoln (Ving Rhames) strikes his landlord, Sturkowski (Frederick Nuemann), after one of Hector’s children is bitten by one of the rats that roams freely through the apartment building. Hector is arrested and facing time in prison. Public defender David Abrams (Stephen Lang) defends Hector in court, claiming that conditions in the slums were so bad that Hector only struck Sturkowski in self-defense. Helping David to make his case about the conditions in Sturkowski’s building is a crusader reporter named Suzanne Terry (Pam Grier).
This episode was all about showing us who David Abrams is. David’s father was a mob lawyer but David has no interest in working with people like Ray Luca and Phil Bartoli. Instead, he wants to defend the poor and the downtrodden. Torello and Krychek happen to stop by the trail and they’re impressed with David’s passion. Krychek is disgusted when Sturkowski says that Hector and his family don’t deserve to live a better life. Who knew that two Chicago cops would be so liberal?
To celebrate Hector’s acquittal, a block party is held. David is the guest of honor and, for reasons that aren’t really clear, he decides to invite Torello and Krychek to come celebrate with him. Everyone at the block party is super excited that two cops are hanging out with them. But then Sturkowski tries to evict the Lincolns and Hector strikes him again. This time, he kills Sturkowski. Torello and Krychek promptly arrest Hector as the episode comes to an end.
(And that is why you don’t invite cops to the block party.)
This episode was well-acted, if a bit heavy-handed. (To a certain extent, it reminded me of those episodes of Miami Vice where Crockett would certainly start talking like an undergrad who had just read about Marx for the first time.) It certainly allowed us to get to know more about David Abrams and Stephen Lang and Pam Grier had a good deal of chemistry as two people who appear to be poised on pursuing a relationship that was not all that common in 1963 Chicago. The block party was where the episode kind of lost me, just because I found it hard to believe that Torello and Krychek would not only show up but be treated as the guests of honor despite the fact that most of the people at the party wouldn’t have the slightest idea who they were. I can understand Abrams being welcomed because Abrams kept Hector out of prison. But Torello and Krychek are just two random, middle-aged, white cops.
This episode established David Abrams as being a man caught between two different worlds, the law and lawless. I can’t wait to see what the show does with him.
“We’re not saints. But we are gonna win this fucking war and I’d rather have you on the winning side.” — Marcus Fenix
Let’s be real for a second: trying to play Gears of War from 2006 right after a session of Fortnite or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is a genuine shock to the system. You forget how heavy games used to feel. In an era where every shooter has slide-canceling, wall-running, and zero sprint-out times, going back to Marcus Fenix is like trying to run a marathon in steel-toed boots. The Xbox 360 classic, now almost two decades old, exists in this weird purgatory of retro gaming. It’s too young to be nostalgic pixel art, but it’s definitely too old to feel modern. And yet, here’s the thing: Gears of War still matters. Not in spite of its clunkiness, but because of it. When you revisit the ruined planet of Sera today, you realize that the “slowness” we now criticize was actually a specific design philosophy that current games have largely abandoned. It’s a fascinating time capsule—a game that feels like a rusty chainsaw, awkward to start, but terrifyingly effective once you get it going.
The first thing a modern player will notice is the speed—or total lack of it. In 2024, if your character takes a full second to slide into cover, players call it “input lag.” Back in 2006, we called it “weight.” The A-button roadie run is iconic, but compared to the fluidity of something like The Last of Us Part II or Gears 5 itself, the original feels like wading through molasses. You can’t vault over cover while shooting. You can’t cancel out of an animation. When you rev that Lancer chainsaw, you are committed to that animation, and if a Locust sneezes on you, you stagger. This should feel archaic. And honestly, sometimes it does. The middle third of the campaign, dragging through the same gray-brown mine shafts, feels repetitive by 2006 standards, but by today’s standards, it’s almost meditative in its simplicity. There’s no open world checklist. No battle pass. No weapon skins to grind for. You just shoot, move up, and shoot again. For a retro palate cleanser, that linear focus is weirdly refreshing.
Visually, Gears of War is a museum piece for a very specific era of game design: the “Real is Brown” movement. When it launched, Unreal Engine 3 was a miracle. Today, those same textures look like wet concrete. The color palette is aggressively desaturated—mixing grays, browns, and the occasional blood splatter. Current games like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart or Horizon Forbidden West are explosions of neon and particle effects. Going back to Gears feels like turning off HDR and watching a DVD on a 4K TV. But here’s the retro magic: the art direction survives the technical decay. The ruined architecture, the massive Locust fortresses, the silhouette of a Berserker breaking through a wall—those aren’t reliant on high polygon counts. They’re reliant on good composition. Jerry O’Flaherty’s vision of “destroyed beauty” still holds up because modern horror-shooters like Scorn or Remnant II are essentially borrowing that same heavy, bio-mechanical aesthetic. You can see the pixelation, sure, but you can also see the blueprint for an entire decade of gaming.
Gameplay is where the retro vs. modern debate gets interesting. The cover system—sticky, magnetic, and automatic—was revolutionary in 2006. By 2024, it’s considered “sticky” in a bad way. Modern shooters prefer contextual cover or manual crouch systems because we hate being glued to walls. Yet, playing Gears today reveals that its combat rhythm is actually more tactical than most modern cover shooters. In The Division 2 or Outriders, you can tank a few hits, heal, and move. In retro Gears on Hardcore difficulty, three bullets kill you. You have to respect the geometry. You have to wait for the Locust to reload. That “stop-and-pop” gameplay feels slow, but it also feels deliberate. Current games are terrified of boring the player, so they constantly throw movement abilities at you. Gears forces you to breathe. It’s almost a horror game in disguise—especially the Berserker fight, where you can’t hurt her from the front. A modern game would put a waypoint marker on her head. Gears just lets you panic and run to the next door. That’s retro charm at its finest: trusting the player to figure it out without a glowing UI.
The weapon design remains timeless, even after all these years. The Lancer with the chainsaw bayonet is one of the few mechanics from the 2000s that still feels fresh because no one else has successfully copied it. Pulling off a saw execution in 2024—even with the stiff animation and the camera glitch—is still cathartic in a way that modern “finishing moves” in Warzone aren’t. The Gnasher shotgun, infamous for its inconsistent pellet spread, is a retro nightmare. Veterans will argue that “host advantage” and “wall bouncing” were skill gaps. New players will argue it just feels broken. Both are correct. That’s the beauty of this game as a retro artifact: the multiplayer is janky, unbalanced, and ruled by veteran roadies who never stopped playing. The active reload mini-game—pressing R to stop a moving bar for a damage boost—remains a tiny stroke of genius that modern games like State of Decay borrowed but never improved.
Now, let’s talk about something that happened outside the actual game but became just as legendary as anything Marcus Fenix did with a shotgun. Before Gears of War even launched, Microsoft and Epic set out to make a commercial that would break every rule of game advertising. They initially approached legendary director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, Se7en) to helm the project—a massive get for a video game tie-in. But when Fincher had to bow out due to a scheduling conflict, a relatively unknown young director named Joseph Kosinski stepped in. You know Kosinski now as the guy who directed Top Gun: Maverick, the $1.5 billion sequel that made the world fall in love with fighter jets again, as well as Tron: Legacy and the Formula One film F1. But back in 2006, he was a visual effects artist and commercial director taking his first big swing. And boy, did he connect. The resulting sixty-second spot fundamentally rewrote the rules of game advertising. Instead of loud rock and explosion montages—the tired template of every shooter ad before 2006—Kosinski showed Marcus Fenix walking alone through a ruined city in the rain, set to Gary Jules’ haunting, melancholy cover of “Mad World.” The ad barely showed coherent gameplay, yet it sold grief, loneliness, and the weight of a lost world. A commercial for a rated-M shooter about chainsaw guns had no catchphrase, no high-fives, no announcer yelling “Are you ready?” Just a broken man trudging through the rain while a piano played.
It was a gamble that paid off so massively that it broke the industry’s advertising brain. Within a year, Halo 3’s “Believe” diorama ads—also influenced by Kosinski’s work—traded action for elderly veterans remembering a war. Dead Island’s infamous reverse-trailer showed a child’s death set to a mournful song. The Last of Us Part II, Cyberpunk 2077, and Death Stranding all followed with slow, emotional piano or vocal covers over solitary heroes walking through beautiful desolation. Even today, when a new trailer drops with a slowed-down pop cover and a hero looking sad in the rain, you’re watching the ghost of Joseph Kosinski’s twenty-year-old masterpiece. The actual game itself is full of cheesy banter and over-the-top gore—Cole Train yelling “Wooooo!”—but that ad sold a tone the game only occasionally delivered. And in doing so, it proved that video games could be marketed as art, not just adrenaline. You don’t just remember the headshots. You remember the rain. And you remember the name of the director who made that rain matter.
So, how does Gears of War hold up as a retro recommendation in 2024? You have to adjust your expectations. This is not a pick-up-and-play title. It’s a history lesson. The story is still barebones (Locust bad, blow up resonator, Dom’s wife is in another castle), but the vibe is immaculate. The lack of a mission select screen is annoying by modern standards, and the vehicle sections (yes, the infamous “sitting on a turret while riding a train” finale) feel painfully scripted. But the co-op? That’s the secret sauce. Playing split-screen Gears today with a friend is arguably better than playing most modern co-op shooters because the game isn’t trying to sell you anything. No loot boxes. No battle pass. Just two beefy space marines sharing one box of ammo and a lot of terrible one-liners. The influence this game had—and it’s impossible to overstate—is the DNA you see in Uncharted, The Last of Us, and even God of War (2018)’s over-the-shoulder camera. Every AAA third-person shooter from the last fifteen years owes its cover mechanic to this clunky, brown, brilliant fossil.
In the end, calling Gears of War “retro” isn’t an insult. It’s a badge of honor. It is the perfect representation of the Xbox 360 era: ambitious, janky, gray-brown, and completely unwilling to apologize for its weight. A modern shooter would buff your movement speed, add a grappling hook, and turn the Locust into loot piñatas. Gears doesn’t care. It wants you to struggle against the controls for a minute, then laugh as you chainsaw a Grub in half. And somewhere in the back of your mind, as you do it, you might hear a soft piano cover. That contrast—grief and gore, slowness and spectacle—is what makes revisiting Gears of War in 2024 so weirdly worthwhile. It is a slow, heavy, dated, and utterly essential piece of gaming history. Take cover. Wait for the reload. And for the love of God, remember to pick up the Torque Bow. You’ll be fine. Just don’t expect to sprint.
“We are gonna have sex in your car. It will happen again!” — Dirty Mike
Adam McKay’s The Other Guys feels like the moment a class clown who is secretly a genius finally snaps and decides to teach the entire school a lesson while making them laugh so hard they forget they’re being educated. Released in 2010, the film lands right in that sweet spot of McKay’s career where he was pivoting away from the pure, unhinged mania of Anchorman and Step Brothers and starting to smuggle razor-sharp satire into the multiplex under a mountain of stupidity. It is, without a doubt, one of the funniest movies of its decade, but calling it just a comedy feels like a disservice. It’s a buddy cop movie that hates the irresponsibility of buddy cop movies, a financial crisis explainer disguised as a screamo TLC tribute, and a showcase for two lead performances that should have spawned at least three sequels. If you’ve somehow managed to sleep on this one, it’s time to fix that.
The opening sequence is a masterclass in bait-and-switch. We are introduced to Danson and Highsmith, the city’s top cops, played with magnificent, self-serious swagger by Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson. They’re chasing down a minor misdemeanor in a way that destroys half of downtown Manhattan, culminating in them heroically jumping off a twenty-story building to land safely in some bushes. Except they don’t. They splatter. It’s a shocking, hilarious, and instantly iconic death scene that serves as McKay’s thesis statement: the action movie logic you’ve been fed for decades is a lethal fantasy. With the heroes dead, the spotlight shifts painfully to the guys who have to do the paperwork on their mangled corpses, forensic accountant Allen Gamble and hot-headed loose cannon Terry Hoitz. These two are, emphatically, the other guys, and when circumstances force them onto a case involving corporate financial fraud, they stumble their way toward something resembling heroism, occasionally despite themselves.
What separates The Other Guys from the pile of mediocre comedy-action hybrids that came before and after it is the chemistry between Ferrell and Wahlberg, which is genuinely one of the more unexpected comedic pairings of that era. Ferrell plays Gamble as a deeply strange man who has weaponized milquetoast passivity into a superpower. His complete, serene contentment with a life of spreadsheets, Grand Theft Auto grand larceny sprees where he obeys all traffic laws, and a suspiciously beautiful wife played by Eva Mendes is a hypnotic thing to watch. Ferrell dials down the bombast and delivers something wonderfully weird and controlled, a man who is simultaneously a complete dork and, as we later discover, a shockingly capable pimp named Gator. Wahlberg, meanwhile, is doing something genuinely interesting here. Terry Hoitz is a walking wound, a great cop reduced to a desk jockey and public mockery for the unforgivable sin of accidentally shooting Derek Jeter during the World Series. He’s angry, humorless, and convinced of his own greatness despite ample evidence to the contrary. Wahlberg plays him completely straight, which is the exact right call, because his deadpan bewilderment at Ferrell’s behavior, the way his voice cracks with desperate, shrill anger when trying to explain a normal scenario, ends up being funnier than almost anything else in the film. Their chemistry is a perfect storm of a guy who wants to live inside a peaceful spreadsheet and a guy who wants to set that spreadsheet on fire while learning to dance the sardine.
This is the kind of comedy where the supporting cast keeps piling on gloriously unhinged performances, which makes Ray Stevenson’s work as the heavy all the more valuable. As Roger Wesley, the corporate enforcer who does the violent bidding of Steve Coogan’s billionaire fraudster, Stevenson operates in a completely different register from everyone else. While Ferrell is weaponizing passive-aggressive politeness, Wahlberg is screaming about peacocks, and Michael Keaton is unconsciously quoting Waterfalls while running a police precinct, Stevenson remains a granite slab of menace. He doesn’t crack jokes, he doesn’t do double-takes, and he certainly doesn’t care about the absurdity swirling around him. There’s something almost old-fashioned about his screen presence here, a grim, heavy-lidded seriousness that makes him feel like he wandered in from a real crime thriller and simply refused to leave. It’s the kind of straight-man performance that doesn’t just anchor the chaos; it makes the chaos funnier by contrast. When he’s methodically hunting down loose ends while Ferrell and Wahlberg are bickering about whether a lion could beat a tuna in open ocean, the collision of tones is pure McKay alchemy.
The plot, such as it is, involves the duo stumbling onto a massive white-collar crime conspiracy led by a billionaire played with smarmy, cowardly glee by Steve Coogan. It’s here that McKay’s deeper ambitions start to peek through the absurdity. While Terry is desperate for a classic action-movie shootout and car chase, the investigation leads them to the Lendl Global offices, where the real villainy isn’t drug lords or terrorists but leveraged buyouts and pension fund looting. There’s a perfect running gag where they keep trying to get into the action, preparing for a massive gunfight against a team of mercenaries, only to find that the corrupt corporate security detail is made up of ex-cops just looking to quietly retire with their benefits. It is the funniest anti-climax, a deliberate denial of violence that reinforces the film’s core idea that the most dangerous criminals wear suits, not ski masks. The financial villain is a thinly veiled stand-in for the kind of Wall Street grift that was very much in the cultural conversation in 2010, just a couple of years after the financial crisis. McKay would later go much deeper on that territory with The Big Short, but the seeds of that interest are planted all over this film.
The comedy in The Other Guys operates on two distinct but equally brilliant levels. There is the surface-level absurdity, the kind that produces quotes like “I’m a peacock, you gotta let me fly!” and the quiet, steady domination of Gamble’s totemic Prius, which somehow survives a fireball helicopter crash without a scratch. The “aim for the bushes” jump, the lion versus tuna debate that Hoitz treats with theological gravity, and the wooden gun gifted to Gamble are all top-tier ridiculousness. Then there is the deeper, more surreal well of humor that feels distinctly McKay. The entire subplot of Gamble’s past as a college pimp named Gator is a work of deranged genius, a slow-motion, honey-dripped flashback that reveals a world of casual, elegant pimping that Ferrell plays with a straight face so absolute it circles back around to being terrifyingly cool. The relentless jokes about Gamble unknowingly marrying way out of his league, his genuine confusion over why people think Eva Mendes is attractive, is a running gag that beautifully plays on Ferrell’s ability to be completely oblivious to the reality surrounding him. Eva Mendes is admittedly underused, though the film at least has fun with the joke by leaning into Wahlberg’s incredulous reaction every time she appears, which never gets old.
Visually, the film has a blandly competent sheen that actually works in its favor. Unlike the frattish haze of Anchorman, here McKay is directing a movie that looks like a real cop film, which makes the eruptions of insanity even more jarring. The action sequences are staged with real competence. The car chases aren’t played as joke sequences; they’re genuinely well-staged, particularly the Prius chase midway through where Gamble’s calm, methodical driving commentary clashes with a panicking Hoitz. It’s legitimately exciting before it goes completely off the rails in the best way. McKay never lets the plot drag even when the jokes need room to breathe. By this point in his career he’d clearly figured out the right pace for this kind of thing, and it shows. The movie moves. The film also showcases Michael Keaton in a delightful supporting role as Captain Gene Mauch, a cop who unconsciously works a second job at Bed Bath & Beyond while peppering his police work with retail slogans. Keaton’s deadpan delivery of lines about TLC references and towel specials, only to shout the chorus of Waterfalls at a moment of high tension, is a thing of beauty. Every single one of his scenes is a gift. It’s a running joke that never explains itself, and it’s all the better for it.
Then there is the ending. For a film that spends nearly two hours being aggressively stupid-smart, the final moments make a radical pivot. As the bad guy is caught, the movie doesn’t just roll credits. It stops dead and turns into a miniature economics lecture. With animated infographics and hard statistics, McKay lays out exactly how Ponzi schemes, bailouts, and income inequality have shattered the American middle class, all while the Rage Against the Machine cover of Maggie’s Farm thrashes on the soundtrack. It’s a jarring, preachy, and completely unexpected move. On first viewing, it feels like the director violently smashing the emergency brake on the comedy train. But in hindsight, it’s the only honest way this movie could end. McKay isn’t just telling us that bank robbers are less dangerous than bankers; he’s stopping us from leaving the theater without understanding the scale of the theft. It doesn’t undermine the fun at all. If anything it adds a layer of purpose that makes the whole thing feel a little more substantial than your average cop spoof. It’s the moment the class clown pulls out a graph showing your student debt will cripple you for life, and somehow, it works because he’s been earning your trust with jokes for the previous hour and a half.
There’s something almost nostalgic about watching a comedy this confident in its own weirdness. The Other Guys arrived at an interesting moment for this kind of movie, when the mid-budget, R-rated studio comedy was still a viable commercial proposition. It made decent money even if it wasn’t a runaway smash, but more importantly, it trusts that you’re going to be on board for a scene where Ferrell and Wahlberg argue about whether they’d rather be a lion or a tuna, and it’s right to trust that. The criticisms are relatively minor. The movie is maybe fifteen minutes too long, and a subplot involving Wahlberg’s ballet background gets introduced and then somewhat dropped. The villain’s scheme, by design, isn’t particularly cinematic, and the film occasionally strains to make the stakes feel real. But these are the kinds of complaints you make about a movie you liked, not a movie you didn’t, and none of them meaningfully dent the overall experience.
More than a decade later, The Other Guys has aged into something of a classic, a revered staple of late-night cable and quotable group chats. It sits at a fascinating crossroads, holding onto the absurdist, quote-heavy DNA of McKay’s earlier work while laying the formal and thematic groundwork for what he would do next with The Big Short and Vice. It proves that the jump from Ron Burgundy to a film about the 2008 housing crisis wasn’t actually that far at all. He just needed Wahlberg to yell a little bit, Ferrell to explain why a lion would still beat a tuna, even in open ocean, and Stevenson to stand in the middle of it all looking like he genuinely wants to murder everyone in the room. Whether you come for the laughs, the surprisingly competent action, or Michael Keaton mumbling TLC lyrics under his breath, you’re going to find something to love. Absolutely worth your time.
Through the Shattered Lens 