Loose Cannons is a 1990 buddy cop comedy film directed by Bob Clark, starring Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, Dom DeLuise, and Ronny Cox. Clark co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Matheson and his son Richard Christian Matheson.
The plot centers around a Cowboy Cop and a multiple-personality, idiosyncratic investigator searching for a lost Adolf Hitler porno.
Provides examples of:
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Fielding may have a split-personality disorder, but he also establishes himself as an extremely good investigator in his very first scene by making a Sherlock Scan of a crime scene and giving Mac and his boss the blow-by-blow (drive-by from a racing boat because of the absurd amount of bullet spread, one of the deceased must have medical records because there's a steel pin on his leg, etc.)
- Epiphany Therapy: Or more like torture therapy, but nevertheless Fielding's split-personality disorder finally gets fixed in the final act by enduring The Dragon's Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique and Fielding even, in a way, thanks him for it.Fielding: Humpty Dumpty's back on the wall! (blasts the head goon, who falls through a window to his death)
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mac Stern is an arrogant and snarky cop, but generates sympathy for Fielding and learns to respect him and his disorder.
- MacGuffin: The Nazi porno starring Hitler, which is being searched by the Nazis, Israelis, the main character detectives, and the FBI.
- Pursued Protagonist: At the beginning of the film, four men in a speedboat are drifting on a foggy night, trying to hide from several villains who taunt them from a more powerful speedboat and display the severed head of one of their associates. As the killers get closer, their targets turn on the engine of their boat and make a run for it, but are chased down and run aground, with two of the four being killed while the other two narrowly escape over a fence.
