It’s been a terrible cliche for as long as I can remember, the cop with a few days left on the job getting killed investigating his last case, but at some point it must have been a fresh idea, no?
I ask because I just re-watched one of my favorite films, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., in honor of William Friedkin’s death, and it begins with this cliche, with lines so terrible (“I’m too old for this shit” included), that I wondered how Friedkin could possibly have included this entire overused trope in such an original and innovative movie. Then I thought: maybe he invented it?
The movie dates from the mid-1980s, which seems late for this cliche to reveal itself but maybe I’ve just seen it repeated so often since then that it only seems like it’s been around forever. Was it a cliche when Friedkin used it?
Nah. It was already an elbow-nudge joke in like 62 or 63 when Cap. Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) in Mad Mad Mad Mad World announces within a minute of his introduction that he’s on the verge of retirement and just wants to wrap up this one last case.
One of the earliest examples is 1932 film Central Park. Charlie, a Central Park cop, is suffering from badly deteriorating vision, but he’s hiding this because his pension vests in a week, after which he can retire. Naturally he’s shot and killed by an armed robber at the end of the film.
Aliens in 1986 famously had Hudson practically begging to die with his short-timer lines.
Somehow Danny Glover survived Lethal Weapon. They set it up on this trope for him to die…
So much so that I could have sworn the “I’m too old for this shit” line mentioned by the OP was first spoken by Glover in Lethal Weapon. At least in the context of a police officer about to retire.
Yeah. I had it wrong in my head because I never watched Live and Die in LA back in the day, so I associate the line with Danny Glover rather than whoever said it in that movie.
The Book of Samuel tells of a Philistine general commanding Goliath to challenge the Israelites in the Valley of Elah to fight in single combat 40 days before his retirement. Day after day Goliath challenged the Israelites but none of then answered. After 39 days of his challenges being ignored Goliath says “I’m too old for this shit” and challenges the Israelites for what would be the last time.
An FYI to fans of the film–Kino Lorber just released their restored version in Blu-ray and UHD. At $17.49 for the Blu-ray, it was an instant buy for me and a major improvement over the original DVD/VHS (or lo-res streaming version if you could find it).
Netflix has a comedian, I don’t remember who, who has a spin on this:
“I was on an airplane when the captain says, ‘Welcome aboard for today’s flight. Just to let you know, I’m retiring after this flight. No matter how it turns out, this will be the last time that I will fly.’ Egads, couldn’t he tell us that at the end of the flight, when we’re safely back on the ground!”
I think that line is from that movie. I mean, they certainly made it famous. He even says it in his cameo in Maverick.
My wife and I rewatched the Lethal Weapon movies lately and our takeaways now are:
Glover is too young to portray the near retirement character in the first movie. I swear he was only 40 playing a 50+ year old.
Glover and Gibson portray extremely abusive cops. In fact, it takes away much of the humor now to see how abusive they are as police. I kept saying to my wife, “Ugh, this is terrible” in reference to how they treat the public in the movie.
Still fun movies despite that flaw in #2. Just don’t hit the same as when they were new.
The Swan Song is a pretty old trope. If the cop’s being shot is in any way a self-sacrifice, then it’s an outgrowth of the swan song, I’d say. I’m betting whatever the earliest example involving some sort of law enforcement person was, it was something like this, and the “Just before ‘official’ retirement/becoming ‘vested’” were added once those became things.
In the Michael Douglas movie “Falling Down” Robert Duval played a cop about to retire on his last day of work. Michael Douglas played a disgrunteled defence engineer called Dfens, going through a divorce.
After a rampage across town Dfens finally had a show down on a dock with the old cop. Dfens had realized that he was the bad guy after all. So in a twist of the old cop dying on his last day, Dfens pulls out a water pistol forcing the old cop the shoot him, suicide by cop.
And Dfens hits the old, about to retire cop right in the forhead. The last words he said was something like, “I would have got you” before Dfens falls off the pier.
