"The Wild Pair" (Beau Bridges, Bubba Smith

Beau Bridges...

April 21, 1988|By Linda Bergstrom.

``The Wild Pair`` (Beau Bridges, Bubba Smith; Beau Bridges, dir. Media, 1987; technicolor. Running time: 89 min. Rating: R. $79.95)

How do you spice up the old good cop/bad cop story? It seems director Beau Bridges has thrown in every device he can think of-guns, car chases, gratuitous nudity, vulgar language, the ``Psycho`` shower scene, torture, a black former football player, his own father. The result is a jumble.

Beau Bridges also stars, playing an FBI agent who grudgingly is paired with narcotics cop Bubba Smith to track down a notorious drug dealer. Their digging reveals that the drug chain goes beyond this one dealer and even involves Smith`s co-workers and superiors. The main source is a retired colonel (Lloyd Bridges) who runs a quasi-military group, the Sentinels, which he describes as ``a bunch of guys tired about the way the subversives are tearing up the country.``

Beau Bridges and Smith battle each other but eventually join forces when they find they can trust only each other. But Beau Bridges` portrayal as the intellectual individualist and Smith`s poses as the gentle brute (he still dresses like a football player, with high white socks and below-the-knee pants) are too much to take.