One Good Cop is a 1991 American crime drama film written and directed by Heywood Gould and starring Michael Keaton, Rene Russo, Anthony LaPaglia and Benjamin Bratt.
Keaton portrays New York City Police Department Detective Artie Lewis, who, with his wife Rita (Russo), adopts his late partner's (LaPaglia) children and loves them as their own.
He initially seeks justice for his adoptive children, but ultimately chooses retaliation by robbing his quarry to support his new family, endangering them and his career.
Artie Lewis is a New York City Police Department detective who believes in his work, loves his wife Rita, and is close to his partner of eight years, Stevie Diroma, a widower with three young daughters.
Grace refuses to testify against him after learning that Artie's actions were not motivated by greed but as a father, so the federal government walks away from the case to avoid compromising its field agents.
Mr. Gould, once a police reporter for The New York Post and later the man who conceived the fun-loving bartender of "Cocktail," is clearly a moralist with a mind of his own.
[2]Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C−, dubbing it "a schizophrenic high-concept movie" with "an unconscionably cynical blend of violence and sentimentality.
"[3] In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, "One Good Cop" wanted to manipulate my emotions, and I was willing to let it try, but finally it was so shameless that I'd had enough.
[4]Ebert's main criticism of the film was towards its resolution, in which Michael Keaton's character does not lose his job or face criminal charges for his illegal actions: ... even if you grant that premise, the movie's last scene, which is supposed to be a happy ending, gets less and less happy the more you think about it, because it assumes the silence and acquiescence of the entire police department (the possibility of an Internal Affairs investigation isn't even contemplated).
I wanted to say, look, there are a lot of police detectives, especially childless ones with wives who work, whose salaries don't force them to steal in order to move out of small apartments.