A stolen police cruiser is in the middle of a highway chase between two little children and the officer they stole it from, trying to get it back. Director/Writer Jon Watts crafts a suspenseful chase-em of a movie that tells the story of two rebellious boys (James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford) who run away from home seeking adventure and immaturity. They come across an abandoned cop car and decide to take ownership of the vehicle. When the owner of the vehicle, Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon) figures this out, it sets him on an all day hunt for the boys in order to get it back, as well as keep his dirty secret from getting out. Make no mistake about it, ‘Cop Car’ is the slowest of slowburns, and if this isn’t your kind of film, then you won’t get a lot out of this movie. I however did enjoy the movie, even if it suffers severely from an uneven three act pacing, as a result of it’s paper thin plot. This is a solid quick film (82 Minutes) to watch on a weekend afternoon while waiting for the time to pass. The setup is original, and pays off immensely because of the performances of the two child protagonists. Many people will watch this film and think these kids are very stupid, but i saw their representation as honest of that to how young children act. The movie really tells the story of fast forwarded adolescence, as these kids have never faced these kinds of events before. The boys have trouble getting the car to stop, turning off the safety of guns, and trust too easily when it comes to the man coming after them. These are mistakes that any child in real life would do, and i commended Watts for making his young characters that much more of an accurate representation to the kinds of choices they make. It’s really a metaphorical stance on the dangerous world being played outside of the magical anything-can-happen kind of place where a kid feels protected. Bacon is also brilliant in building the tension scene by scene. A lot of the pacing relies on his actions in the movie, and his voice alone keeps the film moving through a third act that sadly puts on it’s brakes. A lot of my decent scoring for the movie belongs to the atmospheric setting, complete with nice wide angle shots of unoccupied landscapes as far as the eye can see. There’s a kind of feel from someone to who done his studying of many Cohen Brothers films. A kind of director who feels that his setting is the most important piece in any story. I would agree with that aspect at least in the conversation of ‘Cop Car’. The film doesn’t have anything terribly wrong with it, but i can understand that people will lose interest an hour into the movie when they realize the pulse-racing finale that the movie has been setting for simply isn’t coming. Because of that, ‘Cop Car’ does feel a bit like a disappointment by the credits roll, but an original premise combined with honest performances, presents one of the best DVD secrets of 2015. It accelerates over the speed limit to keep it from playing it safe, but the film would’ve been much better if it stayed on the roads, instead of crashing into a ditch by film’s end.
6/10