'48 Hours' (1982)

Part 'The Defiant Ones,' part 'In the Heat of the Night,' all Eddie Murphy. '48 Hours' was Eddie Murphy's first big-screen role and remains one of his most influential. (Brett Ratner has often cited '48 Hours' as an example of the perfect blend of action and comedy.) In the film, Murphy plays Reggie Hammond, a temporarily paroled criminal who joins up with Nick Nolte's brusque and racially intolerant cop to catch a killer. '48 Hours' has a double whammy of odd coupling: not only the race angle, but also the cop-criminal one. For what it's worth, Nolte thinks '48 Hours' taught Americans how to communicate.