Before Spider-Man / Marvel films, Jon Watts made a sub $1M thriller | Cop Car (2015)
I am Jason Kleeberg, this is Force Five, and today I’m going to give you 5 reasons you might like 2015’s Cop Car, and make sure to stick around because at the end I’ll give you two top 5 lists this movie could easily make.
If you like stripped down, rural crime movies like A Simple Plan, Blood Simple, Fargo or Hell or High Water, you’ll like this film. Cop Car takes place in rural Colorado, a place you don’t normally see on screen and the landscape was chosen because the director Jon Watts grew up there. In fact, he said they shot the movie in the same fields he wandered through when he was ten years old, a fact that gives Cop Car a really authentic feel. It’s filled with empty, endless highways, huge open fields, distant mountains and miles of landscape where you’d think it would be impossible to hide and I think that adds to the danger. The story is really simple - two kids who are around 10 or so find what they think is an abandoned cop car in the middle of nowhere, so they decide to take it for a joy ride. The Sheriff who left the car there comes back, and then it becomes a cat and mouse game to get the car back because there’s something in that car that he really, really needs.
I mentioned John Watts. If you like seeing great directors early films before they got gigantic budgets, check this one out. If you’re not familiar with Watts, you’re certainly familiar with his films - Spider-Man Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home. And Cop Car is basically the exact opposite of a Marvel production. There are like 5 characters, no huge sets, no noticeable green screen and almost no exposition. Watts’ philosophy was the opposite of blockbuster filmmaking, keeping things as simple as possible. There’s something interesting to me about watching directors early films - Hi Mom from DePalma, Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi, Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, or Christopher Nolan’s Following also come to mind.
Kevin Bacon is fantastic as Sheriff Kretzer. I think he’s always really good when he plays a bad guy but there’s something so compelling about his performance here because he’s not an unstoppable monster, he’s a guy who’s also in over his head on something and he’s desperate and pathetic, which in-turn makes him dangerous. He spends most of the movie scrambling around trying to solve an embarrassing problem - two 5th graders stole his car. The script was actually super lean, so Bacon crafted his own backstory, he even sent Watts photoshopped images of himself with different hairstyles and mustaches. It worked, because Kevin Bacon created a really memorable character. He’s funny enough that you can’t help but laugh sometimes, but he’s also corrupt and dangerous enough that you fear for these kids and what will come of them if he gets his mitts on them.
If you like kids-on-an-adventure movies like Mud, Super 8 or The Goonies, I think you’ll get a kick out of this. The film I think it shares the most DNA with might be Stand By Me, but instead of finding a dead body, these kids find a cop car. Like most kids in an adult adventure movies, they’re not seeing their situation as a crime thriller. They find this car and it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to them. They drive it on the highway, wail the siren and explore a piece o the adult world without understanding it. Kevin Bacon, who plays the Sheriff described the movie as being about the loss of innocence, with one violent day permanently changing these two boys.
This is a perfect example of a film where the kids actually sound like kids. James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford play Travis and Harrison and they are incredibly believable. They have such a rich chemistry as these aimless kids who swear because they think it’s dangerous, dare each other to do stupid things and use the moral reasoning of kids that age. For example, at one point they find guns in the back of the cruiser, what are you going to do? You’ve got to try to shoot them. But they’re not action heroes, they have only seen guns in movies, they have no idea what they’re doing. Long story short, they can’t shoot the gun because there’s a safety. Jon Watts said that a lot of what you see on screen is their actual friendship developing and I thought that was really sweet and his tactic of hiring kids who weren’t polished actors paid off. It made me miss those conversations I used to have with my friends when I was ten.
Okay, top 5 lists Cop Car could make. I mentioned it not too long ago but back in the day, Billy Ray Brewton and I did a list of Top 5 Platonic Male Friendships. Travis and Harrison could totally join Red and Andy from The Shawshank Redemption, Frodo and Sam, and Seth and Evan from Superbad. Next up there’s Top 5 movie plots that start because a kid makes a bad decision. I mentioned Mud, The Goonies and Stand By Me earlier but I also think about The Sandlot, when Smalls steals the Babe Ruth ball.
If you’ve seen Cop Car, what did you think of it? If you have a movie you want me to do a 5 reasons video for, email me at forcefivepodcast@gmail.com. Finally, down below you’ll find the link to order the film on Physical Media as well as links to my other socials.
Life is short. Spend it with the people, and the movies, that you love.
