R.I.P.D., set for release on July 19th, stars Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as deceased police officers who, in the afterlife, are summoned to represent the “Rest in Peace Department,” an organization dedicated to apprehending evil souls hiding out on Earth in an effort to escape judgment.
Primarily a montage of scenes, the footage shows Reynold’s still-living Nick Walker arriving at a massive SWAT raid. He’s killed and suddenly the world is frozen in the middle of the action. He walks through a bullet time environment to the outside world where a swirling vortex is waiting for him in the heavens. Unable to stay behind, Walker is lifted into the mouth of the vortex.
Instead of a heavenly afterlife, Walker is met by Mary-Louise Parker’s Procter, a law enforcement bureaucrat who explains the situation — that Walker is one of the best law enforcement agents that ever lived and that he’d be invaluable as a member of the R.I.P.D. — and then pairs him with another one of history’s greatest lawmen, an old west sheriff, Jeff Bridges’ Roy Pulsipher.
There’s a definite Men in Black tone to the film, balancing quite a bit of humor against the action and offering lots of back and forth dialogue between Walker and Pulsipher. One scene has them both attending Walker’s funeral from a distance and Pulsipher, even though he’s trying to calm Walker’s nerves, just talks about how his own funeral was a matter of a coyotes picking apart his skeleton.
One of the repeated gags throughout the film seems to be that, when they’re on Earth, no one sees Walker and Pulsipher as they actually look. Instead, Walker is played by James Hong and Pulsipher is played by Marisa Miller.
“You’ll notice you’re pretty durable,” Pulsipher tells Walker at one point, just before he forces them out the window of a high-rise building. They land just fine, but Walker is annoyed and throws Pulsipher into an oncoming bus as the scene cuts away to the world’s view of a gorgeous blonde woman getting hit.
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