Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Earl Montgomery, a bombastic police academy reject, and Hank Rafferty, a disgraced, mild-mannered cop, can't seem to escape each other. They met on opposite sides of the law during a routine traffic stop that escalated out of control; now as lowly security guards they're thrown together to bust a smuggling operation.
National Security is a formulaic buddy-cop comedy that hits genre beats without much surprise. Martin Lawrence brings his usual energy and Will Patton plays a serviceable villain, but the material is thin and the racial-tension angle is handled clumsily rather than pointedly. Visually it is flat and workmanlike, typical of early-2000s studio comedies. The smuggling plot is perfunctory and the ending resolves predictably. Nothing here distinguishes it from dozens of similar films of the era.