General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Rent-a-Cop

Rent-a-Cop is a 1987 American action comedy crime thriller directed by Jerry London, starring Burt Reynolds as a disgraced Chicago detective who takes work as a store security guard, a "rent-a-cop", and teams up with a prostitute played by Liza Minnelli to hunt the masked killer who destroyed his drug sting.¹ The film was produced by Kings Road Entertainment and Zealcorp Productions Limited, written by Michael Blodgett and Dennis Shryack, and released in the United States on 15 January 1988.²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Jerry London (feature debut); screenplay by Michael Blodgett and Dennis Shryack²
Stars	Burt Reynolds as Tony Church, Liza Minnelli as Della Roberts, James Remar as Dancer¹
Production	Filmed 17 November 1986 to early February 1987; Chicago exteriors, interiors at Cinecittà Studios in Rome; budget $12 million²
Release	United States, 15 January 1988 (moved from a planned 20 November 1987 opening)²
Box office	Domestic gross $295,000, all of it from the opening weekend on 193 screens³
Rating / runtime	R; 96 minutes per the AFI Catalog²
Score	Jerry Goldsmith; cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno³

Spoilers

Plot

Outside a Chicago hotel, vice detective Tony Church (Burt Reynolds) and his team prepare a drug bust with $2 million in buy money. The call girl Della Roberts (Liza Minnelli), arriving to meet a client, knocks on the wrong door and is turned away by a man called "Dancer" (James Remar), a former police officer. After Church's team arrests the dealers, Dancer appears in a motorcycle helmet, throws a flash grenade into the room, and opens fire, killing the dealers and every officer except Church, then escapes with the money and cocaine.⁴

Blamed for the disaster by the precinct commander Wieser (John P. Ryan), Church turns in his badge and takes a job as a store rent-a-cop. Dancer stalks Della, the only witness able to identify him, and she asks Church for protection. Together they break into police records and learn that Dancer is the code name of a fired officer, Adam Booth, and that the city's top cocaine dealer, Alexander (John Stanton), has been employing former officers. At Alexander's mansion party, Dancer kills Della's former madam Beth Connors (Dionne Warwick); the crooked ex-cop Roger Latrele (Richard Masur) confesses to Church that Alexander ordered the ambush before Dancer kills him too. In the climax, Church plants a flash grenade inside Dancer's helmet, killing him.⁴

Production

Director Geoff Murphy was attached to the project in mid-1986 according to trade reports, but Jerry London directed and is the credited director; the film was London's theatrical feature debut after television work including Shōgun.²^•⁵ Principal photography began 17 November 1986, paused for the holidays on 23 December 1986, resumed 5 January 1987, and completed in early February 1987 two days under schedule; dailies from the final day were ruined in the laboratory and had to be re-shot.² Exterior locations were filmed in Chicago, while interiors were shot at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome.²

The supporting cast includes Bernie Casey, Robby Benson, John Stanton, John P. Ryan, and a then-unknown Michael Rooker in the opening scene.⁵^•⁶ Jerry Goldsmith composed the score.⁶

Release and reception

The film was scheduled to open on 20 November 1987, but the release was moved to 15 January 1988, with regional openings in New York City, northern New Jersey, southern Connecticut, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, and Florida, followed by nationwide openings on 5 and 12 February 1988.² It took in about $300,000 from 193 screens over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, a $1,550 per-screen average for Kings Road Entertainment; Box Office Mojo records the total domestic gross as $295,000.⁷^•³ The Los Angeles Times called it a "B Picture With Two A Stars" while noting that Reynolds and Minnelli "play off each other beautifully".⁸

At the Golden Raspberry Awards, Reynolds was nominated for Worst Actor (also for Switching Channels), and Minnelli won Worst Actress for this film and Arthur 2: On the Rocks.⁹ Retrospective reviews have been similarly unenthusiastic: a ZekeFilm review found that the film "makes no effort to obscure the mystery" of who was behind the failed bust, leaving "characters going through the motions", though it praised Goldsmith's score and noted a decent Kino Lorber high-definition remaster with commentary from critic Lee Gambin and actor Richard Masur.⁶ The film holds an IMDb rating of 4.8/10 from about 2,400 users.¹

Other uses of the title

The phrase "rent-a-cop" is a common informal term for a private security guard, and the title has been reused. Rent a Cop is a BBC Three observational documentary series broadcast in 2015, following Sparta Security, a private security firm in Darlington, England, run by Francis Jones; eight 30-minute episodes aired on Thursdays at 22:30, ending 17 December 2015.¹⁰ Special Op: Rent-a-Cop is a 2026 action comedy directed by William Butler, starring Michael Jai White as a former Special Ops agent who escorts senior citizens on a Las Vegas gambling trip while enemies close in; it was released on streaming on 14 April 2026 through Cineverse and runs 1 hour 24 minutes.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Action comedies › Action comedies, 1970s to 1990s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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