COP OUT (15) Comedy. Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Ana de la Reguera, Kevin Pollak, Adam Brody, Guillermo Diaz, Rachida Jones, Michelle Trachtenberg, Seann William Scott. Director: Kevin Smith.

Since his ultra-low budget 1994 debut, Clerks, writer-director Kevin Smith has forged his reputation and cult status with potty-mouthed comedies that celebrate the unspoken bonds of friendship between men.

No better is this exemplified that the misfit characters of Jay and Silent Bob, who wreak havoc in many of his films.

Smith brings those same sensibilities to bear on the action comedy Cop Out, about a pair of NYPD officers on the trail of a stolen baseball card.

Unfortunately, the indie filmmaker is working from someone else’s script for a change, and try as he might to wring laughs from Robb and Marc Cullen’s lifeless words, Smith is on a hiding to nothing.

The screen chemistry between Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan is inert, the latter playing a motor-mouth who interrogates suspects by stealing lines from his favourite movies.

“It’s called homage. It’s French for, ‘Let me do this’,” he tells Willis, who looks as cheesed off as we quickly feel.

The conflation of crime thriller and buddy comedy doesn’t gel and Smith is poorly equipped to energise the occasional action sequences.

At least he is spared another 60 minutes of torture.

Veteran detective Jimmy Monroe (Willis) is struggling to make ends meet and to pay for the dream wedding of his daughter, Ava (Trachtenberg).

So he plans to sell his mint condition trading card of Major League Baseball star Andy Pafko to a local dealer but the card is stolen by stoner thief Dave (Scott).

While Jimmy and partner Paul Hodges (Morgan) hunt for the card, they clash with strait-laced colleagues Hunsaker (Pollak) and Mangold (Brody) and become unwittingly embroiled in a turf war started by gang leader Poh Boy (Diaz).

A beautiful Mexican woman called Gabriela (de la Reguera), who doesn’t speak a word of English, holds the key to bringing down Poh Boy, presuming Jimmy and Paul can keep her alive.

Cop Out is neither funny nor exhilarating, grating on our nerves every time Morgan opens his mouth to launch his character’s pointless musings.

When Poh Boy’s goons open fire on Paul, only the most generous viewers will be hoping he doesn’t take a bullet.

Emotions rarely trouble Willis’ face as the plot lurches towards the inevitable showdown with the bad guys.

Humour falls flat again and again, like Paul chasing after a suspect clad in a foam mobile phone costume.

The NYPD should open an urgent investigation into how such a talented filmmaker could produce such drivel.

**