10 Worst Cop Movies of All Time, Ranked

The cop genre is rich with tension, character drama, and high-stakes action, yet it can also very easily go wrong. With this in mind, this looks at the very bottom of the police movie barrel. It would be easy to simply slap 10 zero-budget B-movies on this list and call it a day, but instead, this list mostly focuses on films with actual budgets and big-name stars.

The following ten movies are buried under clichés, bad jokes, confused tone, or just plain cinematic laziness. Some of them have ironic ‘so-bad-it’s-good-‘ entertainment value, but most are just painful to sit through. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

10

‘Cop Out’ (2010)

Directed by Kevin Smith

“Knock knock. Who’s there? Not your dignity.” Cop Out somehow takes a buddy-cop formula that has worked for decades and squeezes every ounce of charm out of it. The usually terrific Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan play mismatched NYPD officers tracking down a stolen baseball card, and the result is a tonally confused mess that leans heavily on stale jokes and uninspired action. Kevin Smith is a talented storyteller, but he’s clearly out of his element here, reportedly clashing with Willis behind the scenes. This doesn’t seem like the best choice of material for the director either.

The movie tries to riff on genre tropes but forgets to do anything clever with them. Morgan shouts, Willis scowls, and nothing ever really lands. Rinse, repeat. Every second scene feels like it was assembled from rejected outtakes. It’s not funny, not thrilling, and not even so-bad-it’s-good. In the end, the worst thing about Cop Out is that it actually had potential.

9

‘National Security’ (2003)

Directed by Dennis Dugan

“I’m the only one who can stop me.” National Security is another mess of a buddy-cop movie. Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn have zero chemistry as two cops who keep getting paired together for reasons that never feel remotely plausible. The film aims for edgy satire, tackling issues of police corruption and racial profiling, but lands somewhere between cringe and confusion. It’s always a gamble when you’re approaching serious real-world issues through slapstick.

Lawrence is doing his usual high-volume routine, and Zahn (who can be great when given the right script) is trapped trying to match it. Neither character grows, evolves, or even makes much sense. The humor is outdated, the action is flat, and the attempts at social commentary are embarrassing. It’s a movie that somehow tries to say something about race while also stuffing in as many fat jokes and pratfalls as possible. At just 88 minutes, it still feels overlong.

8

‘Righteous Kill’ (2008)

Directed by Jon Avnet

“Most people respect the badge. Everyone respects the gun.” Righteous Kill had one job: let Robert De Niro and Al Pacino share the screen in a gritty crime drama, a kind of Heat reunion. Instead, it gives us a sluggish, derivative script that wastes two of the greatest actors of their generation in a film that feels like a bad CBS procedural stretched to feature length. They play aging detectives hunting a vigilante serial killer, and neither looks remotely interested in what they’re doing.

Watching two acting legends phone it in is somehow more painful than watching unknowns try and fail. Every scene that should crackle with tension instead fizzles out in monotone exchanges and clunky exposition. The twist is obvious, the pacing glacial, and the supporting cast (including 50 Cent, inexplicably) can’t do much with what they’re given. The title represents the whole movie in microcosm: it sounds badass at first, but is actually just kind of meaningless.

7

‘The Snowman’ (2017)

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

“Mister Police, you could have saved her.” The Snowman is a masterclass in how to completely botch a promising thriller. Based on the Jo Nesbø bestseller and starring Michael Fassbender as detective Harry Hole (yes, really), the film follows a serial killer who leaves snowmen at crime scenes. Ok, that premise is admittedly a little goofy, but still, if handled properly, this could have been chilling, atmospheric Nordic noir. Instead, it’s borderline incoherent.

Director Tomas Alfredson later admitted that a significant portion of the script was never filmed due to a rushed schedule, and it shows. Scenes jump with no logic, characters disappear mid-arc, and the killer’s motives remain a murky afterthought. This is a thriller where nobody seems thrilled, including the cast. The editing is disastrous, and the dialogue wooden. A prestige cast and moody setting wasted on a story colder than the climate: lifeless, shapeless, and ultimately melting away into nonsense.

6

‘Beverly Hills Cop III’ (1994)

Directed by John Landis

“You know, the most dangerous kind of cop is a bored one.” Beverly Hills Cop III is far and away the weakest of the series, to the point that it feels like a bootleg of itself. Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, but all the charm, humor, and subversive bite of the first two entries are nowhere to be found. This time, Foley is investigating a murder at a theme park, and the film seems just as lost as he is.

Despite representing a formidable pairing of star and director, this flick simply misses the mark. Murphy looks checked out, the jokes fall flat, and the action is forgettable. John Landis, who previously directed Murphy in Coming to America, can’t capture the anarchic energy the franchise was built on. It’s surprising, as he’s usually a pro when it comes to fun, kinetic storytelling. Alas, what was once fresh and edgy becomes dull, sanitized, and weirdly lifeless.

5

‘The Glimmer Man’ (1996)

Directed by John Gray

“Ever see The Exorcist? That was a good movie.” The Glimmer Man is one of those Steven Seagal vehicles where you’re not sure if it’s an action movie or a parody of one. (To be honest, that’s most Steven Seagal vehicles.) In this one, he plays a former CIA operative turned spiritual homicide detective (again, yes, really), and teams up with Keenen Ivory Wayans for a mismatched buddy routine that has all the chemistry of wet cardboard.

The film tries to inject mysticism into a standard serial killer plot, but nothing about it lands. Seagal mutters fortune-cookie wisdom and occasionally breaks bones, while Wayans does his best to salvage scenes that feel like first drafts. Ultimately, it’s a cop thriller with zero thrills, zero laughs, and a plot held together by duct tape and fog machines. Even by mid-’90s Seagal standards, this one’s baffling and best avoided.

4

‘Showtime’ (2002)

Directed by Tom Dey

“Let’s make some TV magic!” Showtime is what happens when a studio gets the bright idea to make a buddy cop comedy about making a buddy cop TV show (and forgets to be funny). Robert De Niro plays a grizzled detective forced to star in a reality series alongside Eddie Murphy’s fame-hungry patrolman. Again, great stars, poor execution. It’s a meta-concept that lands with all the subtlety of a brick.

Murphy tries to bring energy, and De Niro leans into his scowl, but they’re stuck with a limp script full of lazy satire and tired gags. The entire film feels like a bloated sketch stretched into a movie no one wanted to make. There’s no bite to its media critique, no momentum to its action. It’s meant to poke fun at shallow, cash-grab police movies…but winds up morphing into the very thing it’s trying to mock. No wonder it made a loss at the box office.

3

‘Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot’ (1992)

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode

“I’m the only cop in L.A. whose mother makes his arrests.” Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was supposed to be Sylvester Stallone‘s comedic pivot. The finished product is… odd. Here, Sly plays a tough cop whose overbearing mother (Estelle Getty) shows up and starts tagging along on cases, cleaning his gun, and getting involved in shootouts. It’s as painful as it sounds.

This movie could’ve been a ton of campy fun, but the jokes revolve almost entirely around stale generational stereotypes and Stallone looking embarrassed. There’s no real story, no rhythm, and certainly no laughs. It’s not just a bad cop movie but one of the worst Hollywood comedies of the 1990s. comedy in ’90s Hollywood. Even Stallone has since admitted it was a mistake. “I had heard Schwarzenegger was going to do that movie and I said, ‘I’m going to beat him to it.’ I think he set me up,” the star lamented.

2

‘Cop and a Half’ (1993)

Directed by Henry Winkler

“I want a badge, a gun, and I want to be called ‘Dragon.’” Another police movie that tries the trick of ‘elite cop teams up with unexpected outsider’. This time, Cop and a Half asks: what if a hard-boiled detective was forced to work with a wisecracking eight-year-old? The answer: chaos, irritation, and a full 90 minutes of recycled fish-out-of-water gags. Burt Reynolds looks completely out of place as the grumpy cop babysitting a kid who dreams of being on the force.

The tone is all over the place: too corny for adults, too grim for kids. None of the jokes land where they’re supposed to. It tries to be Kindergarten Cop with none of the charm and all of the awkwardness. The plot is just an excuse for slapstick and sass. Most critics eviscerated the movie, but it actually performed pretty well at the box office, so clearly some people enjoyed it.

1

‘Mitchell’ (1975)

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen

“I’m not a cop, I’m a glutton for punishment.” Here it is, the nadir of the genre. Mitchell is the blueprint for bad cop movies. Joe Don Baker stars as a slovenly detective whose idea of solving crimes involves yelling, eating, and occasionally tripping over things. He’s meant to be gritty and streetwise, but he’s really just unlikable, wandering through a convoluted plot with all the energy of a hungover basset hound. Baker basically punches and blasts his way through 97 senseless minutes.

The script is wafer-thin, and the action is clunky. The filmmakers seem to try and compensate by heaping on brutal violence, profanity, and sexual content. Spoiler: it doesn’t work. Eventually, Mitchell became a cult object of ridicule thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000, and with good reason. It’s a relic of a genre trying to be tough and ending up face-down in its own clichés.

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