Grizzled cop says he's retiring soon, dies - first use of trope?

November 13, 2024 8:49 AM

So I was watching a movie that's close to 40 years old that featured not only the "I'm too old for this shit!" line but also the trope where there's a cop announcing he's due to retire in a few days who more or less immediately gets killed. What is the earliest appearance of this trope? (This will by its nature be a spoilery thread. Since I'm looking for examples that are 40+ years old, I don't think that should be an issue for most people, but if you're some kind of anti-spoiler monastic even on movies old nearly enough to retire from the police force themselves, feel free to opt out.)

The movie I was watching was To Live and Die in LA, by the way.

I'm fully expecting someone who frequents those movie trope pages to have a handy link for this, but I'm also figuring some example by example sorting may be in order.

I figure there were probably antecedents to this trope, like maybe WWII movies where a guy's stint is up the next day, then he gets killed by a sniper or what have you. I'm interested to hear about those too, but I'd also like to know where it started with cop movies, what some classic examples are (Lethal Weapon springs to mind), and even if it's appeared much since it's 1980's heyday.

posted by DirtyOldTown to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

TvTropes “Retirony”
posted by supercres at 8:51 AM on November 13, 2024 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: I should have mentioned that while I think it's fair game, given the title, to be as spoilery as you like for movies old enough to need a prostrate exam, if you mention something relatively new, maybe don't say the title, just link to it, so people can avoid those newer spoilers, too.

On edit, seeing above comment: that is a long list! It may take some collating to see which came first, assuming the actual first example is even on that list.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:52 AM on November 13, 2024

“ One of the earliest examples is 1932 film Central Park. Charlie, a Central Park cop, is suffering from badly deteriorating vision, but he's hiding this because his pension vests in a week, after which he can retire. Naturally he's shot and killed by an armed robber at the end of the film.”

if you believe TVtropers i guess 🤷‍♂️
posted by supercres at 9:10 AM on November 13, 2024 [2 favorites]

I always thought "To Live And Die In LA" was the originator of "I'm too old for this shit" and having the cop die shortly before announcing their retirement. There are clearly earlier examples of similar tropes and situations, but I was under the impression that "To Live And Die In LA" is the movie that started that specific cop + too old for this shit + retirement + death combination. And every movie after that was been riffing on it. I'm willing to be proven wrong, though!

Also, "To Live And Die In LA" is great.
posted by mrphancy at 9:28 AM on November 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

I was going to suggest the earliest example I know, The Blue Lamp (from 1950) but looks like TV Tropes is on top of it.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:52 AM on November 13, 2024

I thought "I'm too old for this shit" came from Danny Glover in "Lethal Weapon," the first of the "Odd Couple Cop Partners" movies that I can remember, and now almost 40 years old.

IIRC Glover talks about his retirement plans, ends up in mortal danger several times, but survives the movie thanks to the heroics of (not yet known to be awful) Mel Gibson.

But the whole surviving thing probably disqualifies this one.
posted by martin q blank at 11:53 AM on November 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

If you accept written versions of this trope and allow your grizzled veteran to be a serving member of the military, then it dates back to the Roman Empire.

"Yep, I just got two more weeks to go, then my last tour of duty is over and it's the pension and the farm for me..." It's called dramatic irony. It's almost as dangerous to say that, as it is to show another guy a picture of the girl you left back home, to whom you are longing to return. Anyone the least bit superstitious knows this means you are doomed for certain. Soldiers have made dark jokes about this situation for centuries.

In fact in many units serving in a hot war, it is an unspoken thing that at a critical point near the end of your tour you get excused from anything the least bit dangerous. This is because it is seriously bad for morale when that guy dies - all the other guys currently serving start to think that the odds of surviving are stacked against them even higher than had previously believed, and become a lot more cautious and unwilling to obey orders that put them in the line of fire. The officers NEED those guys to survive.

Unfortunately I can't cite where it comes up in Roman writing - it's probably some satirical play or the other.
posted by Jane the Brown at 12:17 PM on November 13, 2024 [4 favorites]

From TVTropes:

Retirony is rarely played straight anymore since it has become such a well-known and joked about trope.

It would be interesting to pinpoint where the shift occurs. I think by Lethal Weapon it was already being played for laughs, but before that?
posted by grog at 12:18 PM on November 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

The 1988 movie “Colors” is about this very thing. Robert Duvall is the grizzled old cop who is mentoring the young rookie Sean Penn. Duvall is about to retire. It’s LA, there’s gangs, and it was directed by Dennis Hopper.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 2:00 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]