Though the roots of the buddy cop movie can be found in the likes of Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) and Norman Jewison’s 1967 classic In the Heat of the Night, the big buddy cop breakthrough was Walter Hill’s 48 Hours (1982), which pitched a gruff white cop (Nick Nolte) alongside a wisecracking black ex-con (Eddie Murphy). It was so successful at the box office that loads of other filmmakers began to imitate it. 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop, also starring Murphy, allowed its star (playing a streetwise, out-of-town cop) to hog the limelight, while a pair of bumbling by-the-book cops played joint-second fiddle. Other 80‘s classics of type are Lethal Weapon (maverick and by-the-book family man) and Tango and Cash (slick cop and shambolic partner).