Copshop: Plenty of sass and shooting

Copshop (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

If this were a book, it’d be a lurid 1940s pulp thriller.

 

Actually, it’s still a lurid pulp thriller, albeit with 21st century levels of violence and an unrelenting barrage of gratuitous F-bombs. Sacramento-schooled writer/director Joe Carnahan has never been one for subtlety, having begun his career with gun- and testosterone-laden crime thrillers such as Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, Narc and Smokin’ Aces.

 

Small-town rookie cop Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) doesn't know it yet, but she's
about to have a very, very bad night.

Copshop definitely belongs in their company.

Its genre placement aside, it’s also an ingenious example of claustrophobic, COVID-era filmmaking, as most of the action takes place within a single extensive interior setting. The premise — script by Carnahan, Kurt McLeod and Mark Williams — has vague echoes of 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, which put John Carpenter on the map.

 

The execution sprays enough macho, attitude-laden testosterone to be bottled and sold retail.

 

Carnahan initially cross-cuts between two sets of events. The first is a routine — read: dull and boring — night shift at a small-town Nevada police station, where chatty rookie officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) stands out among her mostly white, disinterested and overweight colleagues. Elsewhere, the frantic Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo) roars down the highway in a car laden with bullet holes, clearly trying to escape something not far behind him.

 

Valerie and her partner respond to a brawl that has disrupted a wedding; while separating the combatants, she’s sucker-punched — hard — by Murretto, who has just rushed to the scene. Naturally, he’s arrested, driven to the station and put in a cell … as he intended.

 

A few minutes later, another pair of officers drag in a disheveled, incoherent drunk who’s barely able to stand, let alone walk. He’s placed in the “drunk cell,” across the aisle from Murretto’s temporary cage.

 

Ah, but that’s no drunk. We’re not surprised, once they’re left alone, when he snaps to sharp-eyed awareness and faces Murretto with the feral anticipation of a lion about to devour a lamb. Meet professional assassin Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), whose current contract is Murretto: a “fixer” for the Mob who got too greedy, and must be dealt with.

 

Viddick playfully taunts his prey, occasionally glancing at his watch, which is counting down the minutes to … what? Murretto, assuming himself safe in the cell, responds with superficial bravado.

Black and Blue: Badly bruised

Black and Blue (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and considerable violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.25.19

As a gritty urban thriller, this is one helluva ride.

Director Deon Taylor and production designer Frank Zito make superlative use of post-Katrina New Orleans’ still ravaged wards; such scenes evoke the bombed-out European cities during all manner of World War II-era film dramas. One can’t help viewing this setting as a deplorable condemnation of the U.S. government’s failure to put any effort into rejuvenating NOLA’s poorer neighborhoods.

With corrupt cops closing in from all sides, Officer Alicia West (Naomie Harris) and
Mouse (Tyrese Gibson) have little chance of surviving the next few seconds, let alone
long enough to get crucial information back to her precinct house.

Taylor also draws a persuasive, crowd-pleasing performance from Naomie Harris, starring as rookie police officer Alicia West: an intelligent, compassionate and admirably (foolishly?) stubborn individual who genuinely believes that change begins one person at a time. She gets solid support from Tyrese Gibson, similarly strong as Milo “Mouse” Jackson, a local fixture whose tenuous, long-dormant tie to Alicia puts him in mortal danger.

And if this film had nothing beyond its suspenseful, heroine-in-peril scenario, this would be an entirely different essay.

But no: Peter A. Dowling’s original script is equal parts (supposedly) barbed social commentary, and in that, this film fails utterly. Indeed, this story is an equally offensive example of that which it intends to indict.

We begin as Alicia, enjoying an early morning jog through her attractive suburban neighborhood, is stopped and thrown against a fence by two white cracker cops intending to bust her for EWB (existing while black). They back off — very reluctantly — only when her ID reveals that she’s “on the job.”

Her day having gotten off to a lousy start, she nonetheless works a full shift alongside mentoring partner Kevin Jennings (Reid Scott), a decent enough guy who laments that their beat — the Ninth Ward — has deteriorated significantly, since she left years earlier and served several army tours in Afghanistan. Chance encounters with Mouse and former best friend Missy (Nafessa Williams) elicit savage contempt from the latter, now that Alicia has become “blue,” rather than black.

A personnel shortage prompts a second night shift detail, with Alicia now working alongside veteran Officer Deacon Brown (James Moses Black). As dawn approaches, they roll up to an abandoned warehouse, Brown having gotten “an assignment” on his personal cell phone. He orders her to remain in the car; when shots are fired, she rushes into the building, intending to support Brown.