Cop Car Kevin Bacon, Hays Wellford, James Freedson-Jackson. Directed by Jon Watts. Rated R. Available on Video on Demand.
Cop Car opens with 10-year-old runaways Harrison (Hays Wellford) and Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) practicing curse words, and that combination of naïveté and nastiness defines Jon Watts’ darkly entertaining thriller. Harrison and Travis continue their dangerous dumbassery when they come across an abandoned police cruiser in the middle of the woods and decide to take it for a little joyride. Unfortunately for them, it belongs to the corrupt, murderous Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon), who was busy burying a body when the kids discovered his car, and who has left another man tied up in the trunk.
Watts and co-writer Christopher D. Ford divide their focus between the kids, who engage in increasingly reckless behavior, and Kretzer, who’s desperately trying to cover his tracks as he attempts to track down the kids and get his car back. Wellford and Freedson-Jackson are excellent as the clueless and careless youngsters, who don’t realize how much trouble they’ve gotten themselves into, and Bacon is equally strong as the charmingly amoral Kretzer. Watts finds suspense in small, absurdist moments, especially a long, wordless scene of Kretzer attempting to unlock a car door with a shoelace.
Like a cross between Stand by Me and No Country for Old Men, Cop Car puts Harrison and Travis through a gauntlet of dangerous situations that force them to grow up in a hurry, and watches as they mostly fail, with disastrous consequences. No one in the movie has good intentions, and all that malice and indifference comes together in a violent, sometimes surreal finale.
Watts falters only at the very end, indulging in some cheap sentiment and then failing to make it count. Even then, though, he directs with lean efficiency, and he doesn’t pull any punches with kids or adults. Watts was recently signed to direct the upcoming Spider-Man reboot, and while he deserves a chance to reach a wider audience, Cop Car shows how much he can accomplish with a simple story, a handful of locations and a whole lot of cleverness and creativity.
