The most memorable movies and TV shows about loose cannon cops

Harry Callahan is, perhaps, cinema’s definitive loose cannon cop. Played by Clint Eastwood from film to film, Callahan doesn’t “play by the rules” en route to meting out what he believes to be justice. The higher-ups can yell at him all they want, but that won’t stop good ol’ Harry. Go ahead, make his day. Feel lucky, punk. Callahan and his needlessly large gun will be waiting for you.

We will admit that we only know of the movie “Loose Cannons” because we were looking for, well, movies and TV shows about loose cannon cops. Thus, we found this 1990 film by Bob Clark. When we evoke Clark, we must invariably point out that in his wild filmography, you find “Black Christmas,” “Porky’s,” “A Christmas Story,” and “Baby Geniuses.” This movie is, somehow, a dark comedy co-starring Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd. Hackman is a grizzled cop, and Aykroyd is a detective with a very medically accurate case of dissociative identity disorder.

All these years later, the ‘80s cult classic “Sledge Hammer!” remains the definitive satire of the loose cannon cop archetype. David Rasche stars as Inspector Sledge Hammer, a gun-obsessed cop with a shoot-first, shoot-second philosophy. Basically, “Sledge Hammer!” took the movie cops like Harry Callahan and took them to their absurdist limits to poke fun at the tropes those characters traffic in, and to consider the ramifications of glorifying such characters.

Buddy cop movies and TV shows are built on mismatched pairings. There are different ways to manifest that, but one is to have a straitlaced cop work with a loose cannon. Martin Riggs, in a very out-of-character turn for Mel Gibson, is out of control and borderline unhinged. He also begins the first of this four-film series, no longer caring if he lives or dies after his wife’s death. Roger Murtaugh, as portrayed by Danny Glover, well, let’s just say he feels like his age leaves him ill-suited for Riggs’ antics. And yet, they make it work, and by “it” we mean “a successful film franchise’

Alonzo Harris gives loose-cannon cops a bad name. He’s not merely playing by his own rules. Harris is outwardly corrupt, unethical, and amoral. He’s a danger to everybody around him, himself included. However, while “Training Day” is something of a by-the-books thriller, Denzel Washington was so compelling in the role that he won Best Actor.

Yes, Axel Foley is funny and witty, and he’s generally nice. He knows how to be an effective cop. However, you cannot deny that he is also something of a loose cannon, if a gentler version than most. He disobeys orders not to investigate the murder of his friend, goes from Detroit to Beverly Hills to do the investigating, and proceeds to run afoul of the cops in town and several places of business. Just because he bought Taggart and Rosewood a late supper doesn’t mean Foley doesn’t very much play by his own rules or skirt the laws.

In the movie that made Chris Tucker a star, Detective Carter is assigned to what is considered a punishment task because he went rogue on a sting operation (“That block was already messed up” and all that). Because Carter is a loose cannon, he’s essentially asked to “babysit” a Hong Kong cop to keep him out of the way. Then, of course, Carter and Lee both decide to disobey orders while bridging racial divides and all that good stuff.

The 2000 remake of “Shaft,” the one directed by John Singleton and starring Samuel L. Jackson, operates almost as an ode to rogue cops. It actively evokes actual events involving NYPD cops operating outside the laws. Plus, Shaft says, “It’s my duty to please that booty.” Hey, we didn’t say this was a good movie, just a memorable movie about a cop who is a loose cannon.

Sandra Bullock is certainly good at playing uptight for the sake of humor, and Melissa McCarthy is certainly often cast to play broad and anarchic. “The Heat” is one of Paul Fieg’s wholly unremarkable, perfectly watchable comedies, and it gets most of its juice from the pairing of Bullock’s too-serious-for-her-own-good FBI agent and McCarthy’s anything-goes Boston cop.

Both Alan Arkin and James Caan, the stars of “Freebie and the Bean,” said they had no clue what the movie was supposed to be and that Richard Rush was incapable as a director. What was scripted as a serious drama about two renegade cops became a buddy comedy because Arkin and Caan kept on riffing in hopes of finding some energy, or at least to avoid being bored while shooting. It’s perhaps not surprising that the movie is a bit of a mess, but it proved somewhat influential and generated a sitcom spinoff.

Matt Damon is a cop who works as a mole for Jack Nicholson’s crime syndicate. Now that’s being a loose cannon! Leonardo DiCaprio is a mobster who is an undercover cop! As a result, he certainly doesn’t always play by the rules. Even if you opted to exclude those two because of their double lives, there’s also Mark Wahlberg, and he certainly takes some things into his own hands.

“The French Connection” is one of the most venerated crime movies, a Best Picture winner, in fact. It didn’t appear earlier in this list because we were debating whether or not Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle is, in fact, a loose cannon. He’s cynical, hard-nosed, and racist, to be sure, but does he really play by his own rules? Ultimately, we decided that, as Popeye becomes determined to break the drug case at the center of the film wide open, his single-minded fervor does drive him into loose cannon territory.

Not to be confused with “The Nice Guys,” the Shane Black movie about two private eyes. “The Good Guys” was a FOX dramedy starring Bradley Whitford and famed documentarian Colin Hanks. The premise is essentially “What if an effective 1980s cop was dropped unchanged into 2010?” Things that may have passed muster in Whitford’s Dan Stark’s glory days now won’t fly, which is how he ends up paired with the straitlaced Jack Bailey.

Yes, Raylan Givens is a U.S. Marshal. We wanted to include “Justified” for a couple of reasons, though. One, the show is really good. You should watch it if you haven’t. Two: sometimes-loose-cannon cops are also called “cowboy cops,” and nobody is a “cowboy cop” like Raylan. Even if he is, technically, a U.S. Marshal.

In a way, “Justified” took over as FX’s acclaimed crime drama. Hey, Walton Goggins is in both shows to boot! “Justified” could be fun at times, though. “The Shield” is searingly dark. Vic Mackey, well, he’s no Raylan Givens. This is clear before the pilot episode has even finished.

We saw “Miami Vice” bandied about as a show about loose-cannon cops, and that sort of tracks. Crockett and Tubbs do work undercover, after all. Plus, the oft-quoted description of “Miami Vice” is “MTV Cops,” and such cops couldn’t always play by the rules. Otherwise, how would they be so cool and modern by 1980s standards?

Where “Miami Vice” strove for glamour and coolness, “The Wire” opted for evenhanded realism. Whether dealing with the police, the drug dealers, or the politicians, you saw moral, reasonable decisions, but also attempts to skirt the law. In terms of the Baltimore cops that populated “The Wire,” though, the truest loose cannon is Jimmy McNulty. By the fifth season, he was willing to invent a serial killer just to do his work.

A fitting place to end. “Last Action Hero” saw two icons of the action genre, star Arnold Schwarzenegger and director John McTiernan, parody the movie landscape they had themselves built. In this meta action-comedy, Schwarzenegger plays the main character in an over-the-top film franchise about a cop who plays by his own rules. The film is built around the collapse of Jack Slater’s world into the real world, which naturally creates a great deal of chaos.