New York Times, 17 January 2003

FILM REVIEW; Scowls and Rants Facing Mugs and Riffs By A. O. SCOTT Steve Zahn and Martin Lawrence play a mismatched pair of security guards in ''National Security,'' an interracial buddy action comedy opening nationwide today. As such relationships go, theirs is admirably egalitarian. They take turns driving, shooting guns and punching each other in the face. . . .  

Mr. Zahn, . . .  who has been a shambling, volatile doofus in movies like ''Joyride'' and ''Riding in Cars With Boys,'' must here shoulder the white-man's-interracial-buddy-movie burden, which is to be the ill-tempered, badly dressed foil for his fast-talking, wildly unpredictable African-American counterpart. (It would require many column inches to list the variations on this indefatigable movie theme. The modern template is probably ''48 Hours''; a notable exception to the rule of white-guy stolidity versus black-guy volatility is the ''Lethal Weapon'' series with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson.)