48 Hrs. - Wikipedia 48 Hrs. For other uses, see 48 Hours. 48 Hrs. Theatrical release poster Directed by Walter Hill Produced by Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver Written by Roger Spottiswoode Walter Hill Larry Gross Steven E. de Souza Starring Nick Nolte Eddie Murphy Annette O'Toole Music by James Horner Cinematography Ric Waite Edited by Freeman A. Davies Mark Warner Billy Weber Distributed by Paramount Pictures Release date December 10, 1982 ( 1982 - 12 - 10 ) Running time 96 minutes Country United States Language English Budget $12 million Box office $78.9 million 1.2 million admissions ( France ) 48 Hrs. is a 1982 American action comedy film directed by Walter Hill. It is Joel Silver 's first film as a film producer. The screenplay was written by Hill, Roger Spottiswoode, Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza, and Jeb Stuart. The film stars Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy ( in his film debut and Golden Globe Award - nominated role ) as a cop and convict, respectively, who team up to catch two cop - killers, Albert Ganz and Billy Bear, played respectively by James Remar and Sonny Landham. The title refers to the amount of time they have to solve the crime. It is often credited as being the first film in the `` buddy cop '' genre, which included the subsequent films Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, and Rush Hour. A sequel, Another 48 Hrs., was released on June 8, 1990. Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Writing and casting 3.2 Shooting 4 Reception 4.1 Box office 4.2 Critical response 4.3 Accolades 5 Remake 6 Soundtrack 7 See also 8 References 9 External links Plot Convicted thief Albert Ganz is working as part of a road gang in California, when a big Native American man named Billy Bear drives up in a pickup truck and asks for water to cool off his truck 's overheating radiator. Ganz and Billy exchange insults and proceed to stage a fight with each other, wrestling in a river, and when the guards try to break up the fight, Billy slips a gun to Ganz, and Billy and Ganz kill two of the three guards and flee the scene. Two days later, Ganz and Billy kill Henry Wong ( John Hauk ), an associate of theirs. Later that same day, Inspector Jack Cates of the San Francisco Police Department 's criminal investigation bureau joins two of his friends and co-workers Detective Algren and Detective Van Zant at the Walden Hotel to check out a man named G.P. Polson, who is in room 27. Jack waits downstairs while Algren and Van Zant head to room 27, where it turns out that G.P. Polson is Ganz. He kills Van Zant and Algren, and escapes with Billy, taking Jack 's revolver. The police station issues Jack a new pistol and fellow cop Ben Kehoe tells Jack about Ganz 's former partner Reggie Hammond, who is in prison with 6 months to go on a three - year sentence for armed robbery. Jack manages to work alone in the search for Ganz and then visits Reggie at the prison. Jack gets Reggie a 48 - hour leave from the prison so Reggie can help Jack find Ganz and Billy. Reggie leads Jack to an apartment where Ganz 's last remaining associate Luther lives. When Jack looks around, Luther shoots at him and refuses to be interrogated, so Jack puts him in jail. That night, Reggie leads Jack to Torchy 's, a redneck hangout where Billy used to be a bartender. Reggie, on a challenge from Jack, shakes the bar down, single - handedly bringing the crowd under his control. They get a lead on Billy 's old girlfriend, but this also leads nowhere, as the girlfriend says she threw Billy out. Reggie confesses that he, Ganz, Billy Bear, Luther and Wong had robbed a drug dealer of $500,000 some years earlier and that the money was ( and remains ) stashed in the trunk of Reggie 's car in a downtown parking garage. Instead of splitting the money, Ganz sold Reggie out, resulting in his incarceration. It was also the reason why Ganz and Billy took Luther 's girlfriend Rosalie : they wanted Luther to get Reggie 's money in exchange for her safe return. However, Luther goes and gets the car, and Jack and Reggie tail him to a Muni station where Ganz comes to get the money. Luther, however, recognizes Jack, and Ganz and Billy escape, while Reggie chases after Luther. Left with nothing, Jack ends up going back to the police station and waits for Reggie to call. Jack goes to Vroman 's, in the Fillmore district, to find Reggie, who has tracked Luther to a hotel across the street. Jack, humbled, apologizes for continuously berating and insulting Reggie. He lends Reggie some money to pay for a hotel room to have sex with a girl he 's met, but as he leaves the club with her, he sees Luther leave the hotel. Luther gets onto a stolen bus driven by Billy and hands over the money to Ganz, who shoots Luther and presumably Rosalie. Ganz spots Jack and Reggie following them, and a car chase / gunfight ensues, which ends when Billy forces Jack 's Cadillac through the window of a Cadillac showroom. At this point following a heated verbal thrashing from Jack 's boss Haden, Jack and Reggie are ready to resign themselves to the fact that they failed to catch Ganz. At a local bar, Jack wonders if Billy might go back to see his girl and use her place as a hideout. Jack and Reggie force their way inside and after a brief confrontation Reggie shoots Billy. Ganz escapes into a maze of alleyways, capturing Reggie, before being killed by Jack. Finally, Jack takes Reggie to go see the girl he had met earlier at Vromans. Jack leaves the money in Reggie 's car, but asks for a loan on another Cadillac when he gets out a changed man. Jack disapproves and takes Reggie back to prison. Cast Nick Nolte as Jack Cates Eddie Murphy as Reggie Hammond James Remar as Albert Ganz David Patrick Kelly as Luther Sonny Landham as Billy Bear Brion James as Ben Kehoe Annette O'Toole as Elaine Marshall Frank McRae as Captain Haden Kerry Sherman as Rosalie Jonathan Banks as Detective Algren Margot Rose as Casey Denise Crosby as Sally Olivia Brown as Candy Production Writing and casting Lawrence Gordon came up with the original idea for the film. The premise had the Governor of Louisiana 's daughter kidnapped by a criminal, who strapped dynamite to her head and threatened to blow her up in 48 hours if the ransom was not met. The meanest cop goes to the worst prison in the state and gets out the most vicious criminal for his knowledge of the kidnapper who was his cellmate. Walter Hill says Gordon may have had the idea as far back as 1971 and a few writers worked on the project. In 1975 Gordon was making Hard Times with writer - director Walter Hill and editor Roger Spottiswoode. Spottiswoode wanted to direct and Hill suggested he break in by writing a script. He did a draft of 48 Hours supervised by Hill for Columbia Pictures, who had financed 48 Hours. Later Tracy Keenan Wynn worked on the script The film moved from Columbia to Paramount, who wanted to do a draft for Clint Eastwood. They hired Hill to rewrite the script with Eastwood as the criminal. He did so `` but when I turned it in I said that I did n't think it would work, '' Hill said, adding `` that the best idea would be to make Richard Pryor the criminal and have someone like Eastwood play the cop. Back in ' 78 or ' 79 no one seemed to think this was such a good idea. '' Eastwood ended up playing a criminal in Escape from Alcatraz instead. As a result, 48 Hrs. went into limbo for two years. However Gordon and his co-producer Joel Silver did not forget the project. Gordon called Hill and asked him if he would make the film with Nick Nolte as Cates. `` Paramount felt that the combination of Nick Nolte and a good black actor would be commercial, '' said Hill. `` What happened is very simple : Richard Pryor is now an enormous movie star, and that 's changed everybody 's mind about black lead players. '' From the start, Hill envisioned a more improvisational film than he 'd ever before created. `` The story is traditional urban thriller : two terrible guys are out there and have to be brought down, '' he said. `` But even though I enjoy working in genres, the point is always to explode them or give them a transfusion. So I made a very conscious decision to go with the elements of personality of the two players, rather than be overly genuflective to the narrative. Thrusting a white policeman and a black convict together carries so much gravity that we did n't have to beat the white - black thing to death. If it works, it 's because of the actors ' personalities. '' Hill 's first choice after Richard Pryor was Gregory Hines. When he was not available, Hill 's then - girlfriend Hildy Gottlieb recommended her client, Eddie Murphy, then best known for his work on Saturday Night Live. The character of Reggie Hammond was originally named Willie Biggs, but Eddie Murphy felt that was too stereotypical of a black man 's name and changed it to Reggie Hammond. Stephen De Souza worked on the script for a few weeks after Eddie Murphy was cast. Critic Michael Sragow says `` The producers recommended de Souza to Hill because they thought he 'd be good at adding a light touch to the action. Hill did n't find de Souza fast enough or his style of comic writing appropriate to the movie ; he thought the writer contributed gags instead of personality touches ( very few of which were used ), and he just did n't develop the rapport with de Souza that he 'd later have with Gross. '' Hill brought on Larry Gross to work on the script three weeks prior to shooting. He told Gross `` I 've been working this fella and while I like em I know it 's not gon na work out... '' and called the film `` a shaggy dog story. Defiant Ones plus chuckles. '' Sragow says, `` Hill has been known throughout his career for defining character through action rather than psychological badinage, but he knew that this movie would be more of a character piece than a plot picture, and he wanted a writer who 'd challenge his own habits and assumptions. Throughout filming, Hill joked that he waved the flag called `` myth and archetype '' - trying to play off the folkloric expectations an audience might have for a big blonde hero like Nick Nolte - while Larry Gross waved a flag called `` social and psychological realism. '' The writers ' relationship became so symbiotic that Gross often found Hill coming down on the side of S&PR and Gross defending the prerogatives of M&A. '' Gross says his main contributions were : the idea that Reggie Hammond wanted badly to have sex after three years in prison ; Nick Nolte having a relationship with his girlfriend that mirrored the frustration Eddie was having ; improving `` the nuances of the relationships between Nick and his girl, his boss and the killers. The killers were sharpened up and made more interesting... Whenever Walter could invent a monologue for one of the women ( all bit parts ), he would. '' Gross thought Hill has received `` a bum rap on the woman question. '' `` One of the things I think makes 48 HRS. really more interesting than the average kind of movie like this, '' says its co-writer, `` is that, although women play relatively small roles in the narrative, they kind of haunt everyone 's imagination. The film really is sort of a screwball comedy about men and women trying to get together and not getting together, even though it is a very conventional gangster piece. `` People had this perception of Walter being melancholy, '' Gross said. `` And now that he 's made this film no one thinks he 's melancholy any more. '' Shooting Filming started 17 May 1982. Murphy started a few weeks after principal photography began because he was finishing up a season of Saturday Night Live. The shoot went well but Hill ran into problems with studio executives. Michael Eisner, then head of Paramount, was worried that the film was not funny enough. Hill and his co-screenwriter, Larry Gross wrote more material tailored to Nolte 's and Murphy 's personalities. By Hill 's account, they rewrote Murphy 's character right to the very last day of shooting. Executives also found the footage of the gunfight in the hotel to be too violent and were worried that it would kill the film 's humor. They told Hill that he would never work for Paramount again as a result. In 2008, co-writer Larry Gross 's contemporaneous diary of his days on set was published on the MovieCityNews website. Reception Box Office 48 Hrs. was the seventh highest - grossing film of 1982. It grossed $4,369,868 in its opening weekend and $78,868,508 overall at the domestic box office. Critical response This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. ( November 2015 ) 48 Hrs. received critical acclaim, and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1982. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 92 % `` fresh '' rating, based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3 / 10. The site 's critical consensus reads, `` Marking an auspicious feature film debut for Eddie Murphy, 48 Hrs. is a briskly paced action comedy that succeeds largely due to the outstanding chemistry between its two leads ''. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 71 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating `` generally favorable reviews ''. In 2007, the staff at IGN named the movie the third greatest buddy cop film. Accolades 48 Hrs. was nominated and won several critical awards. Walter Hill won the Grand Prix award at the Cognac Festival du Film Policier. Eddie Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Acting Debut - Male. The film 's screenplay was nominated by the Edgar Allan Poe Awards for Best Motion Picture. James Horner also won an award for his score at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. Remake In 2017, the Safdie brothers announced they will helm the film and co-write the script with Jerrod Carmichael. Soundtrack In January 2011, Intrada Records released the world premiere recording of James Horner 's score and songs from the movie in a limited edition run of 5000 units. This was the first official release of the score ; previous pressings from Europe were unofficial bootlegs with music from other James Horner film scores. Track listing No. Title Artist Length 1. `` Main Titles '' James Horner 5 : 13 2. `` Jack Leaves Elaine 's Apartment '' James Horner 1 : 10 3. `` The Walden Hotel '' James Horner 4 : 14 4. `` Aerobics '' James Horner 4 : 12 5. `` Subway Station '' James Horner 5 : 43 6. `` Subway Chase '' James Horner 1 : 54 7. `` Luther 's Blues '' James Horner 2 : 00 8. `` The Alley '' James Horner 5 : 23 9. `` The Boys Are Back In Town '' The BusBoys 2 : 40 10. `` 48 Hrs. '' The BusBoys 3 : 16 11. `` Love Songs Are For Crazies '' The BusBoys 3 : 48 12. `` New Shoes '' The BusBoys 3 : 34 13. `` Torchy 's Boogie '' Ira Newborn 3 : 00 See also 1980s portal Film portal List of American films of 1982 References Jump up ^ Box Office Information for 48 Hrs. The Wrap. Retrieved April 4, 2013. Jump up ^ `` Box Office Information for 48 Hrs. ''. Box Office Mojo. IMDB. Retrieved January 17, 2012. Jump up ^ Box office figures for Walter Hill films in France at Box Office Story ^ Jump up to : McGilligan, Patrick ( June 2004 ). `` Walter Hill : Last Man Standing ''. Film International. Retrieved 2007 - 11 - 28. ^ Jump up to : Sragow, Michael ( Mar -- Apr 1983 ). `` Ghostwriters ''. Film Comment ( 19.2 ed. ). p. 9 - 18, 80. Jump up ^ Finke, Nikki ( 19 September 2007 ). `` Hildy Gottlieb Rejoins ICM in MP Talent ''. deadline.com. Retrieved 11 July 2017. ^ Jump up to : `` MCN : The 48 Hr Journals, Pt 10 ''. Moviecitynews.com. Retrieved 2016 - 10 - 16. Jump up ^ `` MCN : The 48 Hr Journals, Pt 1 ''. moviecitynews.com. Retrieved 11 July 2017. Jump up ^ LA CLIPS Honing the plot on Hill 's 48 HRS. Deans, Laurie. The Globe and Mail ( Toronto, Ont ) 24 Dec 1982 : E. 3. Jump up ^ `` MCN : The 48 Hr Journals, Pt 2 ''. moviecitynews.com. Retrieved 11 July 2017. Jump up ^ `` MCN : The 48 Hr Journals, Pt 3 ''. moviecitynews.com. Retrieved 11 July 2017. Jump up ^ `` 1982 Domestic Grosses ''. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` Box Office and Business Information for 48 Hrs. ''. IMDb. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` Box Office Information for 48 Hrs. ''. Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Archived from the original on 2 July 2010. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` The Greatest Films of 1982 ''. AMC FilmSite.org. Archived from the original on 24 July 2010. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` The Best Movies of 1982... on DVD ''. Amazon.com. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` The Best Movies of 1982 by Rank ''. Films101.com. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` Most Popular Feature Films Released in 1982 ''. IMDb. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` 48 Hrs. ''. Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 2015 - 03 - 23. Jump up ^ `` 48 Hrs. Reviews ''. Metacritic. Retrieved 2016 - 10 - 16. Jump up ^ `` The Top 10 Buddy Cop Films ''. IGN. NewsCorp. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ `` 48 Hrs. : Award Wins and Nominations ''. IMDb. Retrieved June 20, 2010. Jump up ^ Dry, Jude ( December 14, 2017 ). `` Josh and Benny Safdie to Remake ' 48 Hours ' With Jerrod Carmichael ''. Indiewire. Retrieved December 15, 2017. Jump up ^ `` 48 Hrs ( Intrada Special Collection ) ''. Jump up ^ `` 48 Hrs - SoundtrackCollector.com details ''. External links Wikiquote has quotations related to : 48 Hrs. 48 Hrs. on IMDb 48 Hrs. at AllMovie 48 Hrs. at Box Office Mojo 48 Hrs. at Rotten Tomatoes Larry Gross ' 48 Hrs. Diaries, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10 Films directed by Walter Hill Hard Times ( 1975 ) The Driver ( 1978 ) The Warriors ( 1979 ) The Long Riders ( 1980 ) Southern Comfort ( 1981 ) 48 Hrs. ( 1982 ) Streets of Fire ( 1984 ) Brewster 's Millions ( 1985 ) Crossroads ( 1986 ) Extreme Prejudice ( 1987 ) Red Heat ( 1988 ) Johnny Handsome ( 1989 ) Another 48 Hrs. ( 1990 ) Trespass ( 1992 ) Geronimo : An American Legend ( 1993 ) Wild Bill ( 1995 ) Last Man Standing ( 1996 ) Supernova ( 2000 ) Undisputed ( 2002 ) Broken Trail ( 2006 ) Bullet to the Head ( 2012 ) The Assignment ( 2016 ) Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=48_Hrs.&oldid=823798429 '' Categories : 1982 films English - language films 1980s action comedy films 1980s buddy films 1980s criminal comedy films American action comedy films American buddy cop films American criminal comedy films American films Buddy comedy films Films scored by James Horner Films directed by Walter Hill Films produced by Joel Silver Films set in San Francisco Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area Films shot in San Francisco Paramount Pictures films Police detective films Hidden categories : Pages using div col without cols and colwidth parameters Articles to be expanded from November 2015 All articles to be expanded Articles using small message boxes Talk Contents About Wikipedia Wikiquote Български Bosanski Català Čeština Deutsch Español Euskara فارسی Français Հայերեն Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Magyar Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Српски / srpski Suomi Svenska Українська Edit links This page was last edited on 3 February 2018, at 13 : 52. 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Question: when did the movie 48 hours come out
Answer: 1982