Its title may have ominous overtones in our anti-terrorism era, but this is just a harebrained comedy staring Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn. The National Security in question is a rent-a-cop company that employs the two stars. Their "meet cute" involves a Rodney King-esque case of police brutality: Earl (Lawrence), a wisecracking, police-academy reject, has allegedly been beaten by straitlaced cop Hank (Zahn). As it turns out, a bee is responsible for the damage inflicted on Earl's face, but Hank nonetheless loses his badge and gets six months for his trouble. Then, after much circumlocution, the two forge a tenuous alliance and go after the sadistic baddie (a platinum-blond Eric Roberts) who offed Hank's previous partner.

The implausible plot and direction by Dennis Dugan are largely superfluous -- this is a Martin Lawrence vehicle intended to flood the screen with "black man been wronged" humor (Earl is "belligerently opposed to any interracial coupling, unless the man is black"), and Zahn is dragged along as the grin-and-bear-it pincushion. It's the kind of shtick Richard Pryor made sizzle (and socially edgy); here it occasionally pops but mostly fizzles. (90 minutes) At the Entertainment, Flagship, Holiday, Providence Place Mall 16, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.