Buddy Buddy

Buddy Buddy (called Here, a friend in Spain, and Compadres in Argentina) is a 1981 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The little critical and public success of the film made Wilder abandon the film direction. The film is based on the homonymous play by Francis Veber, already made into a film in France under the title L'emmerdeur.

Plot

Trabucco (Walter Matthau) is a hitman hired to liquidate the three key witnesses in the trial against a mafia boss. He gets his way with two of them, but things get complicated with the third, Rudy "Disco" Gambola, heavily guarded by the police.

Installed in a hotel room across from the courts, Trabucco awaits Gambola's arrival to finish him off like a sniper. But his roommate, Victor Clooney (Jack Lemmon), whom his wife (Paula Prentiss) has left for a famous sexologist, Dr. Zuckerprot, jeopardizes his mission when he vainly attempts suicide.

The unsociable Trabucco will have no choice but to help him, even taking him to the clinic run by Zuckerprot so that Clooney tries, unsuccessfully, to reconcile with Celia, his unfaithful wife.

Back at the hotel, and due to an injection that the sexologist gave him by mistake, Trabucco finds himself unable to carry out his mission. Victor Clooney, grateful for Trabucco's help, offers to be the one to shoot the snitch. His incompetence causes him, however, to miss the shot, killing a policeman in the escort, who, luckily for Trabucco, turns out to be Rudy Gambola, whom Captain Hubris had forced to change his impeccable white suit for the uniform of a policeman.

Trabucco and Victor Clooney manage to escape. The first one retires to a paradisiacal island, to which the second disembarks fleeing from the police after burning down Dr. Zuckerprot's clinic.