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53 reviews in total

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17 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Fun mix of action and comedy, 21 May 2003

Author: mattymatt4ever from Jersey City, NJ

I really enjoyed this movie! It's filled with laughs and excitement, and never once was I not entertained. Next to "48 Hours" I think this is one of the best buddy cop movies I have yet seen. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez make a wonderful team, with dead-on chemistry. Dreyfuss steals the show with his hilarious performance, proving he's just as talented at doing broad comedy as he is intense drama. That especially shows in the scene where he's about to walk out of Madeline Stowe's house, but doesn't want to be recognized, so he asks her to lend him a hat. The way he handled that scene was so magnificent, and there are many other farcical moments that he handled just as efficiently, and with the wrong timing and delivery those scenes could've collapsed. Estevez plays the straight man, also doing a magnificent job, and you really feel his envy when he's spying on Stowe, who's being hit on by Dreyfuss. I loved the scenes where the rival cops pulled pranks on each other. Speaking of which, Forrest Whitaker pops up in a fine early performance. And Madeline Stowe is great and sexy, as always.

Sure, the plot is quite predictable, but as I said I was always entertained, thanks to sharp writing and great performances. John Badham is a fine action director, so he kept those action scenes filled with suspense and tension. "Stakeout" is not a film that will keep your brain occupied--as a matter of fact there are some scenes that require you to check your brain at the door--but I assure you that you'll have a damn good time.

My score: 8 (out of 10)

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Very enjoyable......., 22 September 2001
Author: gazzo-2 from United States

Somewheres in between 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Lethal Weapon' you find this. Good cop/buddy action flick, plenty of humour, the violence is for real, the chemistry between the two leads and Stowe Just right. I enjoy the scene where she shifts her position JUST so slightly, its quite erotic, while the pranks the two cops play on each other are quite funny too.

Its fun watching how put out Estevez gets with the older guy whose clearly not acting his age.

There's nothing terribly deep here, and some of its really dated-Lethal Weapon-ish graphics, the cars, the angry black squad leader, the music(Miami Sound Machine, anyone?), etc, traditional boatchase/fight/battle to the death inside hellacious warehouse/factory finale, etc all par for the course.

But no biggies. The second one wasn't nearly as good's this one.

*** outta ****

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11 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
It Works for Some Reason, 29 November 2003

Author: Gary Murphy (glm@hilbertinc.com) from Olathe, KS, USA

This is a forumulaic buddy movie, but it works. Madeleine Stowe is just wonderful. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez also work very well. With good supporting acting all around, this movie works, when normally I would be rolling my eyes.

Good acting and some very good one-liner writing make what could have been a bad movie (like "Another Stakeout") and enjoyable experience. I recommend it for some good-hearted fun.

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
It has the right mix of comedy and action, 6 May 2007

Author: walsh-22 from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Some people knock this film but I think it is a very good film.

The basic plot line is Richard Dreyfuss (Chris Lecce) and Emilio Estevez (Bill Reimers) are detectives who are assigned to stakeout a woman (Madeline Stowe). Her ex-boyfriend is a violent con who has escaped from prison (Aidan Quinn) and the F.B.I think there may be a chance that he will try to get in contact with her. Chris Lecce soon finds himself falling in love with Maria and gets in many funny situations as he comes a part of the stakeout himself such as him leaving her house the next morning after they have made love and disguising himself with a pink hat and shawl and trying to evade the police without being recognised and ending up being on the surveillance and on tape.

I think the number one thing that works for the film is the relationship between Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez's characters. They have great chemistry and just bounce humour off one another. Another humorous aspect to their relationship is a type of role reversal. Chris is older than Bill but yet he is not that bothered about promotion and he doesn't commit to any of his girlfriends. While Bill is a happily married man who has a child and who wants to go up the promotion ranks.

Another thing that makes me laugh is the competition Bill and Chris have with Dan Lauria (Phil Coldshank) and Forest Whitaker (Jack Pismo) where they play practical jokes on one another. I especially liked the one Bill played on Phil's dog where he put a wild cat in the car and the cat ended up chasing Phil's dog down the road. Brilliant! The film even had time to add romance to the story between Maria and Chris which added another dimension to the film and it was interesting seeing their relationship develop and what would happen in the end when Maria found out Chris was a cop.

This film has the right mix of genres in it and it doesn't slow down the plot line but it gives you different emotions to feel, humour, romance and your heart rate jumping which it did, in the scene where you think Aidan's character has come and he kills Chris and Maria. I jumped out of my seat at that. I liked that John Badham added that as at that point you have taken in the humour and romance and then this scene comes along that surprises and shocks you.

One of my best Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez films.

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6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Great Action/Comedy that's quite hilarious and very entertaining with a cool story Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are brilliant together!, 6 April 2006

Author: callanvass

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is a great Action/Comedy that's quite hilarious and very entertaining with a cool story, Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are brilliant together!. All the characters are great, and it also had some good dramatic moments as well, plus Richard Dreyfuss,Emilio Estevez and Madeleine Stowe are all simply amazing in this!. Aidan Quinn is very good as the bad guy, and I thought Estevez and Dreyfuss had wonderful chemistry together ,plus it's very well made and written as well. It's also pretty underrated in my opinion, and one of the funniest scenes in the movie for me is when the cops are chasing Dreyfuss as they think he's the suspect, and he's wearing a pink hat and weird clothing, plus this should be higher then 6.4!. The whole cast really seemed to be enjoying themselves, and Dreyfuss and Stowe had pretty good chemistry together as well, plus the finale is quite exciting. The ending is very funny, and it had some great music in it as well, plus the opening was somewhat disturbing. This is a great Action/Comedy that's quite hilarious and very entertaining, with a cool story, Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez were brilliant together, I highly recommend this one!. The Direction is great!. John Badham does a great! job here with really good camera work, good angles and keeping the film funny and at a very fast pace. The Acting is wonderful!. Richard Dreyfuss is amazing here, he is extremely hilarious very likable had wonderful chemistry with Estevez, had some cool lines, seemed to be enjoying himself, and had perfect comic timing!, I love this guy!. Emilio Estevez is amazing as always and is also amazing here, he is extremely likable, funny worked so well together with Dreyfuss had lots of charisma, and had some really funny scenes, he was amazing! (Estevez rules!!!!!!!). Madeleine Stowe is incredibly gorgeous and is amazing as always, she had a decent accent, was funny had pretty good chemistry with Dreyfuss, and had a fun character I loved her as usual! (Stowe Rules!!!!!!!). Aidan Quinn is very good as the bad guy, he was intense and really convinced me I liked him. Dan Lauria and Forest Whitaker are good as the two dim witted cops I liked them. Rest of the cast are fine. Overall I highly recommend this one!. ***1/2 out of 5

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Dreyfuss' best effort since his 70's movies, 5 July 1999

Author: Dan Grant (dan.grant@bell.ca) from Toronto, Ontario

There is something about Richard Dreyfuss that makes me think of George Clooney. I believe Clooney is one of a very few slate of actors that can make any scene work no matter how good or bad it is written. Dreyfuss is like that too. I remember a particular scene in Jaws when he brings wine over to Brody's house and Brody cracks it open and decides to drink from it. Dreyfuss tries to warn him by saying, " You might want to let that breathe.... nothing, nothing. " He takes a small scene and makes it that much more interesting by his excellent interpretations of who they are. Chris Leece is his best acting since the seventies. He is so much fun to watch and it is his relationship with Bill ( Estevez ) and the other two stakeout cops ( one of them being a very funny Forest Whitaker ) that make this film a treat to watch. Its strengths are its dialogue and acting, and although Badham directs a fast and frenzied film ( much like Beverly Hills Cop ) some of the movie just doesn't fit, especially the end where it resorts to Bruce Willis tactics and ends with explosions and death. But that aside the film excels, and it is a very funny film written by the same guy that had a hand in The Fugitive.

Here we have a film about two cops ( Dreyfuss and Estevez ) that are assigned to watch the home of the girlfriend of an escaped convict that may be on his way back to see her. Dreyfuss ends up getting a little too close to his subject and before long he ends up falling in love with her. This puts Bill in an awkward situation because not only is it against the rules and ethics, but he has to now cover for Chris during briefings with his superiors and he also has to keep the other two cops on the stakeout from finding out about Chris' involvement with their subject. The subject's name is Maria and she is played with richness by Madeline Stowe ( The General's Daughter ).

Some of the hilarity in this film lies with the two sets of cops trying to out do one another in their pranks. It seems that they have worked on stakeouts together before and it is shenanigans like leaving dog poop in the fridge and putting marker on the rims of the binoculars that add some nice comedy to the routine. Dreyfuss also has one hilarious line that had me laughing for quite some time. When they first get their description of who it is that they are watching, it describes Maria as 5'5 and 342 pounds. " 342 pounds! OHHH, she could be the house! "

The film works great as a comedy and only so so as a violent action film. I think the film would have benefitted if it stuck strictly to comedy and instead of reverting to a chase and explosions at the end, they could have written it better so that it is resolved with words and comic genius, just like the rest of the film. But overall this film is worth seeing for its hilarity.

**** One final note. Chris and Bill have movie line contests. It is a great way to pass the time and when Bill asks Chris the one line " Well this was not a boating accident. " Chris doesn't know. That is a nice touch seeing as it was Dreyfuss' Matt Hooper from Jaws that said that. That's a nice piece of inside Hollywood and it plays really well.

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Thumbs Up! A Great Crime Comedy Film!, 13 November 2011

Author: Humphrey Fish from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Stakeout focuses on two cops are given the 'dirty' job of staking out the home of an escaped convict's ex-girlfriend. Chris and the beautiful girlfriend accidentally meet and fall in love. Now what did I think of this movie? I thought that this movie was great! I had a whole lot of fun while I was watching this movie, I thought that it was so much fun to watch(pardon my word usage, but I just happen to speak like this). Stakeout gets a rating of two thumbs up from me, it is a great movie that combines crime and comedy, there are mostly serious parts in this movie, but there are also quite a few scenes in this movie that had me laughing out loud like a lunatic, such as the some of the scenes where Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez are spying on Madeleine Stowe's character and while Dreyfuss is around her, he has to do his best to hide that fact that his a cop. Stakeout is a very great time, it is filled with humor, action, thrills, and overall, it is filled with what a movie should have, entertainment.

I really like Richard Dreyfuss, and so I was looking forward to seeing this movie, and in my point of view, Dreyfuss was great in this movie. Richard Dreyfuss is usually good in a lot of movies that he is in, such as Mr. Holland's Opus, Close Encounters Of The Third King, and not to mention the classic, Jaws. Dreyfuss maintains a certain level in this movie, he plays his character perfectly natural, he never tries too hard to be funny or overly dramatic, and that's why he's great in this movie, he plays his character how a movie character should be played, not overly dramatic, nor emotionless, but perfectly natural. I also really like Emilio Esteves, who plays Richard Dreyfuss' partner in this movie, like Richard Dreyfuss, he played his character naturally as well, he also didn't try to be too funny, he maintained his acting at a certain level, and that's why he was great in this movie.

If you haven't seen Stakeout already, then here is what you should, you should take the time to watch, because the chances are you are really going to enjoy it a lot! You will probably enjoy this movie for the thrills, the action, the excitement, and not to mention, the laughs! I am so glad that I took the time to watch this movie, because I certainly had a great time watching it and enjoying it! However, as this is an R-Rated movie, it is not a comedy movie for the whole family, and also due to the violence in it, so when you are old enough to watch it, watch it. This movie is great because of the humor, the acting, the directing, or in short everything, and that is why I enjoyed it as much as I did! Stakeout is a very interesting bit of movie making, the results are something to see.

10/10

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7 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Amusing moments, 7 October 2003
Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico, USA

This is kind of funny and, for the most part, enjoyable. On the surface it looks like another comic cop thriller but, really, the core of the plot couldn't be older. That is -- it goes way past "The Gay Divorcée," past the Greek or Roman from whom Shakespeare stole "A Comedy of Errors," back past the masques, winding up somewhere I would guess around Homo cromagnonsesis in Les Ezyies de Tayac. The mistaken-identity plot is framed by a bit of violence. First, Dreyfus gets into a fist fight with a perp he and Estevez are chasing (Estevez is nothing much more than a straight man in this movie) and the two combatants fall into a huge container of fish and barely escape being filleted by the Chinese workers. The second involves a shoot out between Aidan Quinn's villain and a lot of cop cars and owes a lot to the chase in "Bullitt", although done mostly for laughs. At the end there is another strictly conventional shootout and fist fight, aboard a boat, on top of rolling logs (this is Seattle), and in a timber mill which gives us a good idea of how gigantic saws are used to turn logs into planks -- and men into planks as well, given half a chance.

Quinn is excellent, but so is almost everyone else. Madeleine Stowe is drop-dead gorgeous, with or without Hispanic makeup, and she can act too. Dreyfus is very funny. He is caught in all sorts of embarrassing situations and gets a chance to display that expression of abject humiliation that he does so well. He gets a chance to do a lot of physical comedy too, running around wearing a pink sun hat, wrapped in a shawl, while pursued by the police. And when he inadvertently reveals he is spying on Stowe, during a phone call in which he warns her that her food is burning, she demands to know how he knew. He tears his eyes from the telescope and tells her, "I -- er -- I could hear is sizzling in the background." Then he turns his face to the side, wrinkled with disgust, and hisses to himself -- "Heard it SIZZLING in the background?" There are all sorts of run-ins in which she still thinks he is the phone repairman he's been pretending to be, and they're all engagingly cute.

It's not a masterpiece of comedy, and the realistic violence is out of place. But it's smoothly, professionally done. There is an icky them song, but the composer gives Stowe's scenes a bouncy fingido-sabor-Latino sound. I've seen this a couple of times and keep waiting to be bored by it but have never quite been able to get over the hump.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Surpsisingly entertaining, 15 September 2009

Author: aalataur-2 from Finland

Good stuff from the 80's. A cop buddy movie, with a little romance, a little action and a lot of comedy. The comedy part works out pretty well. The soundtrack is, well, very 80's.. but very good also. Serious scenes depicting the bad guys are pretty realistic and the movie has surprisingly dark tones in these parts. Only thing I don't like about in this movie, is that Richard Dreyfuss was 40 when he made this, gray hair and not that much of it, he doesn't have the looks of Connery, and he gets this hot young girl. Of course he is nice and funny and all that, but I found it to be a bit of a far stretch. Also the main characters have both a funny mustache which makes Dreyfuss look even older.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Stakeout = Øjne I Natten (Danish Title), 28 August 2008

Author: Amsomnia Studios (lerkim@gmail.com) from Denmark

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Stakeout is a classic; it has a lot of funny moments, enough action to at least get you a little going, and a perfect but simple love story.

Story 9/10 The story is actually simple for an 80es movie, but it does just what is always needed to get a lot of peers to look it up, you will love the small subtle wits, the overall love that is shared between the two, the story goes a little like this. A evil old friend of Maria (Madeleine Stowe)has just escaped prison, his goal is of course to reach her, 4 cops are set on a rather long stakeout, we happen to see all 4 cops but the story revolves more around Bill (Emilio Estevez)and Chris (Richard Dreyfuss) in the start it seems like it is going to be a rather boring stakeout, the girl doesn't even seem to be very pretty in the description of the police records, as many 80es movies, actually as a lot of movies the girl is of course a rather hot babe, and this movie is no exception, Chris who has just been dumped falls head over heels for this girl, hotter then hot, and from there on Chris have to protect his identity so that Maria don't know who he really is, yet this is tougher then he of course realizes, the rest you will need to find out for yourself.

Actors: 9/10 We got a mix of a lot of good actors, the most noticeable is of course Emilio Estevez, Richard Dreyfuss, Madeleine Stowe and Aidan Quinn, this movie doesn't have a big cast, and the rest of the actors are really not the ones catching your eyes, since they don't really have much to the story, but some lines from the other actors are fun enough to get you going. If you are a fan of either of these 4 fine actors I suggest picking this movie up while it is still in some lending stores, I just bought it from an online store and felt that old rush, first time I saw it I was ten years old, I know what many are going to say, this is not a movie for a ten year old and it isn't I can go with it, but as ten I loved it anyway, it still rocks just as it did back then.

Soundtrack 9/10 I loved the soundtrack, there aren't many numbers in this movie, but the ones that are perfect for the movie, especially the end theme Is It Love, I thought that theme was fitting like moth to a flame. I wouldn't buy the soundtrack just for the numbers there are on this soundtrack but defiantly would go to a store looking for some of the songs. Mr, Mister would be the first I would sort out in a store just for the heck of it, I couldn't find his albums though but that is of course simple cause his carrier was in the 80es and some in the 90es not the 20es, but if you find some I would buy it, believe me some are worth…

Special Effects N/A I know this is an action movie but it doesn't really have any special effects, at least not something you would notice, but the ones there are does add a little to the movie, but in my appointing this movie doesn't really not it at all anyways, the comedy and love is enough to hold this movie even for such small flaws, but other then that nothing…

Overall 9/10 Everything is perfect, I could take the count down to 8/10 for the special effects but that doesn't really would be fair at all, I didn't even care for the special effects in the first way, so it shouldn't do any good raising a perfectly good movie down to a lower stage. All the way through this movie the mood has a good way of proving something not many movies can do, even if this movie is a lot like any other movie this one does it better, just my thoughts on this gem of a favorite movie.

------------------------- If you saw this movie I would not suggest seeing Another Stakeout it has its good moments but it is a boring sequel and it screws over a nearly perfect first movie, it is just filling and doesn't need to be there at all, the first had every potentials and don't need any sequel at all…

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