(pronounced 'forty-eight hours') is a 1982 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Walter Hill, from a screenplay co-written with Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza and Roger Spottiswoode.

It stars Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy (the latter in his film debut) as a cop and a convict, respectively, who team up to catch two hardened criminals.

Convicted career criminal Albert Ganz escapes from custody with the help of his accomplice Billy Bear.

SFPD Inspector Jack Cates, accompanied by Detectives Algren and Van Zant, trace Ganz and Billy to a hotel, where they have checked in under aliases.

In the ensuing shootout, Ganz kills Algren and Van Zant, and escapes with Billy, taking Jack's service revolver.

[4] The premise had the Governor of Louisiana's daughter kidnapped by a criminal, who strapped dynamite to her head and threatened to blow her up in 48 hours if the ransom was not met.

The meanest cop goes to the worst prison in the state and gets out the most vicious criminal for his knowledge of the kidnapper who was his cellmate.

In 1975 Gordon was making Hard Times with writer-director Walter Hill and editor Roger Spottiswoode.

He did so "but when I turned it in I said that I didn't think it would work," Hill said, adding "that the best idea would be to make Richard Pryor the criminal and have someone like Eastwood play the cop.

[4] "Paramount felt that the combination of Nick Nolte and a good black actor would be commercial," said Hill.

"What happened is very simple: Richard Pryor is now an enormous movie star, and that's changed everybody's mind about black lead players."

Thrusting a white policeman and a black convict together carries so much gravity that we didn't have to beat the white-black thing to death.

When he was not available, Hill's then-girlfriend Hildy Gottlieb recommended her client, Eddie Murphy, then best known for his work on Saturday Night Live.

Critic Michael Sragow says "The producers recommended de Souza to Hill because they thought he'd be good at adding a light touch to the action.

"[5] Gross says his main contributions were: the idea that Reggie Hammond wanted badly to have sex after three years in prison; Nick Nolte having a relationship with his girlfriend that mirrored the frustration Eddie was having; improving "the nuances of the relationships between Nick and his girl, his boss and the killers.

Murphy started a few weeks after principal photography began because he was finishing up a season of Saturday Night Live.

Executives also found the footage of the gunfight in the hotel to be too violent and were worried that it would kill the film's humor.

[4] Actor Chris Mulkey, said it was widely known on set that Paramount executives hated what they had seen of Murphy's performance in dailies and wanted to fire him, but Nolte and Hill fought to keep him.

[12] In 2008, co-writer Larry Gross's contemporaneous diary of his days on set was published on the MovieCityNews website.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Marking an auspicious feature film debut for Eddie Murphy, 48 Hrs.

is a briskly paced action comedy that succeeds largely due to the outstanding chemistry between its two leads".

Walter Hill returned to direct, and Nolte, Murphy, James, and McRae all reprised their roles.

A Hindi-language Indian remake, Andar Baahar, was released in 1984, with Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in the lead roles.

[citation needed] In 2017, the Safdie brothers announced they would helm a remake and co-write the script with Jerrod Carmichael.