Blu-Ray Review: Cop Car

By Brendan Ross

Cop Car is a Colorado-set thriller about two rambunctious young boys who discover an abandoned police cruiser and, with an underdeveloped sense of right from wrong, end up taking it for a joyride. Things get sticky when it turns out sheriff Kevin Bacon was only temporarily parking his cruiser while busy disposing of a corpse in the woods. Upon returning to find that his car was highjacked, Bacon sets out to find the young boys responsible before they check the trunk. Dun dunn dunnnnnn.

Without revealing any spoilers, that is more or less the entire plot to the movie. Now in a day and age where it seems nearly every film coming out is so exhaustingly plot-heavy and convoluted, Cop Car’s context-free approach is not only incredibly refreshing, it also works beautifully. We don’t know much about what criminal activity Kevin Bacon was up to prior or where that body he was disposing of came from, and we don’t need to. This is not lazy storytelling, this is clearly a deliberate choice as we are seeing these events unfold from the boys perspective. We know exactly as much as they know, that Kevin Bacon is a bad guy.

What Cop Car lacks in context, it more than makes up for in its revelations and surprises along the way, including a wonderfully unexpected appearance by Shea Wingham (Boardwalk Empire), which is ALWAYS welcome, and a comically evil scene involving Camryn Manheim (The Practice). But the main attraction here is Kevin Bacon. Watching him have so much fun in this role as a person who is inherently evil but also not particularly bright is an absolute joy to watch and made me pine for more sleazy Kevin Bacon roles.

The world writer-director Jon Watts creates is both gorgeous and unsettling. I’ve heard many Coen Brothers comparisons, which are reasonable. His scenes are all staged in a hauntingly realistic way with just a dash of surrealism that you could say is reminiscent of the Coens. However, what really sets his approach apart is how well he nails the spectrum of emotions flowing through these kids. I think anyone who grew up in a smallish town at this age can relate to the boredom, confusion, fear, excitement, and holliganistic-tendancies on display in some way. And above all else, that is what makes Cop Car work as well as it does.

The only supplement included is a rather atrocious “making of” featurette, which plays more like a trailer for a making of than an actual making of. At less than fie minutes in length, it blasts through interviews and behind-the-scenes footage at such a rapid pace that it’s nearly impossible to take any of it in. Give it a miss.

Cop Car was released by Anchor Bay Canada Entertainment on October 6.