'National Security' plugs a few surprises into a tired formula

Friday, January 17, 2003

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

The mismatched buddy adventure comedy is the most overworked of all modern movie genres, and if the returns on "I Spy" are any indication, the public finally has grown weary of it.

MOVIE REVIEW

NATIONAL SECURITY

DIRECTOR: Dennis Dugan

CAST: Martin Lawrence, Steve Zahn

RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for violence, language and some sensuality

WHERE: Bella Bottega Stadium 11, Cinema 17, Crossroads, East Valley, Everett 9, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Lewis & Clark, Longston Place Stadium 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Monroe 12, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12

GRADE: B-

To its credit, "National Security," which teams Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn as two bickering L.A. security guards bumbling after a gang of thieves, tries to be different.

It's only a notch above the routine, and it obeys all the conventions of its tired formula, but it also tones the anarchy with a serious edge and it works a surprisingly effective vein of race-relations satire.

Lawrence plays a cocky, recently washed-out police academy recruit whose whole identity is wrapped up in being a persecuted black man -- so paranoid that he attributes a bee sting to white racism.

Zahn plays an embittered, long-suffering and racially tolerant L.A. cop provoked by Lawrence into a Rodney King-like altercation that earns him six months hard time in prison.

When he gets out, the two men find themselves employed as minimum-wage security guards at the same company, and the circumstances of the script, of course, force them into an uneasy alliance.

As the movie unfolds, it's mostly at the level of wild farce, with all the frantic cars chases, blistering shoot-outs and impossible cliff-hanging situations that the ads promise.

But some of the stunts are exhilarating, the humor is remarkably free of the usual crudities and director Dennis Dugan ("Happy Gilmore") keeps Zahn's character perfectly straight: He could be doing a remake of "The French Connection."

And Lawrence has never been so bold in the extent to which he satirizes black rage: It's his entire shtick here, and the howls of laughter it elicited from the mostly black Seattle preview audience indicated they found it in no way offensive.