The Man

A federal agent (Samuel L. Jackson) investigates an illegal weapons ring that killed his partner, but he becomes saddled with a motormouth salesman (Eugene Levy) who unwittingly blunders into the middle of things and can’t shut up long enough to extricate himself. Jackson and Levy make an amusing team. Or rather, the idea of teaming them is amusing: the badass and the candy-ass, both making asses of themselves. Too bad three writers (Jim Piddock, Margaret Oberman and Steve Carpenter) couldn’t do anything with the idea except package it in a moth-eaten story straight off the dustiest shelves at Cop-Movie-Cliché-Mart. It has an amazing number of clichés, in fact, considering that the movie is only 84 minutes long. Les Mayfield directs with mechanical carelessness; his shots often fail to match.