Cop Car represents all the best aspects of independent cinema. Director Jon Watts will be taking on the next solo Spider-Man movie and he proves with this feature that he can produce a beautiful, tense, action-packed story in 90 minutes, even if the rest of the film does beg the question – am I supposed to see a Spider-Man movie in this?
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Cop Car is the story of two eleven-year-old boys in Colorado who run away from home without telling anyone. In their minds they are on the adventure of a lifetime that will surely become a piece of folklore in it’s own right. Harrison is played by Hays Wellford (and during my interview Jon Watts admitted that this character is based the most strongly on himself), and he is a bit reticent to go along with Travis (played with James Freedson-Jackson), when the pair find an abandoned Cop Car. The lure of power is ultimately too much for the boys and, after locating the keys, they proceed to joy ride is across town. Child actors are a problematic thing in film as they often come across as reading dialogue straight off the page (young Reed and young Ben from the recent Fantastic Four movie come to mind), but Wellford and Freedson-Jackson are wonderful to behold on screen. Watts has wrested completely natural and very emotional performances from both boys much to the film’s success. Harrison and Travis are the emotional heart of Cop Car as well as being the audience’s point of view characters and Watts proves that – seemingly effortlessly – he can bring true to life attitudes to his narrative.
The other side of Cop Car is the local sheriff who it belongs to Kretzer played by Kevin Bacon who is also the film’s executive producer. Bacon is superb in this role cementing himself as a great character actor. While not much exposition is given about Sheriff Kretzer, (there’s not that much dialogue in Cop Car, to be perfectly frank), Bacon’s performance holds enough depth and drops just enough clues for viewers to enjoy going along with the character in his mystery. Bacon’s performance vacillates between nice small town authority figure and frighteningly corrupt thug. Also, to his credit, Bacon does more running throughout the course of Cop Car than Tom Cruise has done in any of his Mission Impossible series, often in long panning shots that don’t cut.
I’m being purposefully sparse on the plot details of Cop Car because the movie is a rural thriller filled with intrigue, obstacles and shifting conflicts at every turn. There is a never a dull minute in the 90 you will sit with this movie. Jon Watts and Christopher D. Ford (of Robot & Frank), take every opportunity to raise the stakes and heighten the drama, while never stepping beyond the bonds of believable reality. The rural Colorado setting (some of which was shot where Watts himself grew up), is utilized very much as a character in and of itself, an element which informs many of the aesthetic and tonal aspects of the movie.
Bottom line: Cop Car is arresting, beautiful and terrifying. You will see pieces of your own childhood and plead desperately for Harrison and Travis to make better life choices than you would have at their age. 10/10
Cop Car is in select theaters today.
