Today on the 5: Once again, The Criterion Channel has put together another collection with a movie I'd never seen that caught my eye. The film is titled Cop, and it's a 1988 crime thriller which largely succeeds due to a powerful performance by James Woods.
Ozone Nightmare
Cop Retro Review
Welcome to you daily five for Tuesday July 30th, 2020 for I have sung the praises of the criteria on channel often in these fives and on the regular shows, and I'm going to continue doing so because they just seem to keep coming up with movies that I have never seen that look interesting and when I watch them, I'm really glad I did. And it is the case with today's film, which is titled cop from 1988 which was added in, I don't know how old this collection is but it's got to be somewhat recent it's a collection on criteria on that is called neo noir. And I looked at the movie and I read the description and I thought oh this, this sounds interesting it's from again 1988 and it's starring James Woods who, even though I have my problems with him as a person in recent years certainly has done good work I generally enjoy movies I see him in and in particular at this time period, this is when he was doing some of his better work and it just sounded really interesting to me now I didn't realize going into it that it is adapted from a book by the same author his work was adapted into LA confidential but I kept thinking of LA confidential watching this so it made sense once I got to the end. Now Elroy the author James Elroy did not like this nor did he like the LA confidential adaptation which just seems bonkers to me because that is such a beautifully done movie but watching this, it does feel like this is which is sort of a weird inversion because this is set in the modern day in 1988 when it was filmed and of course LA confidential was set in the 50s but cop feels like an early attempt to do what LA confidential then perfected. And I don't say that to mean that cop is a bad movie I think it's actually a very good movie but it's slimmer it's meaner it's grittier it's not as pretty it is definitely more down the dirt than LA confidential was. You could easily see LA confidential's events being in the same exact universe as cop that cops in the modern day this is an LA this is an LA confidential type of dirty police officer at Bud White type that simply exists in the modern day. And that's what it operates as James Woods plays the title character the cop of the movie named oh what's his name something Hopkins I know his name is Hopkins his last name and he is a police officer who definitely has no problems bending breaking the rules if he believes that he is serving what he judges to be a greater good and that's really what the movie is about this is a film anchored around James Woods in his performance as this police officer who has this in very similar ways to the Bud White character that Russell Crow portrayed in LA confidential has this real problem with people who hurt women and yet treats almost everyone in his life as completely disposable outside of maybe his very young daughter but everybody else is a tool to be used so that he can dispense what he feels is justice and when he is investigating a crime and there's really no spoilers in this but even though it's a retro view I'll keep the spoilers light if you want to watch it but he is called into he takes a call for a murder in LA finds a woman who has been killed pretty brutally and starts to believe that this is actually the most recent work by a serial killer who has gone undetected for a number of years because nobody was really paying attention to the details and he starts to spot similarities and becomes convinced that he is on the trail of somebody who has killed multiple women from about the mid to late 70s up and through the late 80s and so he starts to try to figure out how he can catch this person and he starts to as I said not really care about who he's damaging along the way as he pursues this individual that he is convinced he alone has convinced himself and you know you have to watch the movie to find out if he's right or you can listen to the show on Friday where I'll get into the details but the real driving force of the movie is his relentless pursuit of this person who he doesn't even know who it is and his willingness to throw everything out on the way a total ends justifies the means type of person and it is again a riveting performance by Woods and a really interesting kind of small scale police story it really is really it's just about one particular possible string of murders in LA somewhere doesn't have any larger repercussions it's really a pretty small cast when all is said and done and all orbits around James Woods and his portrayal of this Hopkins officer a great movie it's very simple it's very direct it's quick and yet it is very memorable it has a very powerful ending and as I said if you like LA confidential you're going to see a lot of the qualities of that film in a slightly less refined quality here so I would absolutely recommend it to people who enjoyed LA confidential it's not going to be the same I'm not saying it's of the same quality but if you enjoyed that movie then watch this one because honestly what this feels like is an early version of what that later film would perfect later