Watch The Rookie For Free

Pretty Good

It is a performances centric movie

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I really love the pairing of great actors Raul Julia and Sonia Braga, e. g. in "Moon over Parador". However, casting these two Latino actors as German mobsters is ridiculous. They do not look like Germans, they do not act and move like Germans and they definetely do not have the accent. For comparison, see the German villains in "Die Hard", where this aspect was done basically right.I watched the Movie dubbed into German (my mother tongue). Even then, Julia and Braga are not believable.

Continuing my plan to watch every Clint Eastwood movie in order I come to The Rookie (1990)Plot In A Paragraph: A veteran cop (Eastwood) whose partner is killed, gets paired up with a by the book rookie (Charlie Sheen) who has to be taught the rules of the street by the older officer. The plot alone tells us we are not going to get anything original here. We've seen the story a hundred times before. Everything we see here is something that has worked in another Clint Eastwood detective movie. His character Nick Pulovski is a mean tempered, committed detective with a love of one liners much like Harry Callaghan. He doesn't want a new partner but he's forced to take one. Due to the veteran cop having a personal vendetta against the bad guy (He did kill his partner after all) we get the obligatory scene where he is pulled off the case. We know the drill. The cop will wage a private war no matter what his orders are, and the rookie will back his partner as far as the rule book allows. After initially disliking each other, the partners start to get on.?Veteran cop will need saving by the Rookie, who by now has disregarded the rule book. Then throw in a sex scene, a couple of chases and a shoot out at the end. Despite having the lowest budget of an Eastwood movie since Pale Rider (only $10 million dollars) and the lowest budget of an Eastwood cop movie for 13 years (The Gauntlet) it's all up there on the screen, displayed during The Rookie's many action sequences we get a lot of explosions and high speed chases. Eastwood certainly does well with what he had as it looks like a much more expensive movie. Looking at the budget, after three flops in a row, were Warner Bros starting to lose faith in Eastwood?? He had made Warner Bros a lot of money by this point, as his 20 previous movie for them usually performed well against their budgets, but none of his previous 7 movies had ended in the years top 10 highest grossers, since Sudden Impact in 1983. Since The Rookie was part of the White Hunter Black Heart deal with Warner Bros, with Eastwood making a more commercial movie of their choice, I'm not sure how much of the blame falls at Eastwood's door, but as actor and director he must take some of it. Even if he gives the best performance in the movie. Charlie Sheen is OK, if surprisingly subdued (He later admitted to being terrified of Clint, and said it showed in his performance) Raul Julia and Sonja Braga are disappointingly under used!! Action movies live and die by their villain, here we have two excellent actors, going through the motions of performing in parts, than have no lines worth speaking and no distinguishable identities.In a year dominated by Home Alone, Ghost, Pretty Woman and Dances With Wolves, The Rookie grossed $21 million at the domestic Box Office to end the year the 56th highest grossing movie of 1990.

David Ackerman (Charlie Sheen) is a new detective in the LAPD. He's haunted by the guilt over the death of his brother. Nick Pulovski (Clint Eastwood) is a detective investigating Strom (Raul Julia)'s car thief ring. His partner is killed by Strom and the case is transfered to homicide. He is given Ackerman as his new partner and he refuses to let go of the case against Strom.It's a buddy cop drama with a lifeless buddy cop relationship. Eastwood is rehashing his Dirty Harry persona. Sheen doesn't play off of it well. He's too cold. It lacks humor and it lacks chemistry. There are some fine action stunt work but there isn't much else.

The scene with Sonia Braga raping Clint Eastwood would've been, for its stupidity, the lowest point in any other film. In "The Rookie" it's one of the highlights. The other one being the scene with Charlie Sheen trashing a biker bar. For some reason I like to watch them over and over again.Everything else seems to have been built around the two scenes and, consequently, has "filler" written all over. Eastwood was never a good actor. He's got a remarkable screen presence, but that alone, in this case, was not enough. He's a very good director, though, but here he didn't even bother with that. Overall, it's as if he wasn't sure whether he wants a relaxed action flick, or a suspense thriller, or a 70's type crime drama. For an action flick it's rather claustrophobic and noir, for a suspense thriller it's way too predictable (to the point of camp) and the dialog is very corny. For a crime drama it's terribly stilted and lacking in mise-en-scène. Even with all that aside, the timing was all over the place and many potentially good scenes were ruined by disinterested directing and editing.Before the clichés really began to plague Hollywood industry, the Rookie was already boasting many of them. The rookie cop maturing into an experienced crime-buster. The veteran cop aiming to score a big case. The criminal mastermind (not too bright, mind you). The yelling police captain.I don't know if cheesiness of dialog should be seen as a cliché - but this film has got it a-plenty. Same goes for miscasting. Charlie Sheen is wooden, Tom Skerritt is wasted, Pepe Serna acts like he's auditioning for "Ace Ventura", Sonia Braga is hardly worth a mention... and Raul Julia, as good actor as he was, could NEVER pass off as a German.