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Monday, August 10, 2015

Cop Car Review: Kevin Bacon Scares Me

First off, just generally impressed by the special screening of Cop Car at the London West Hollywood brought to us by Alamo Drafthouse, before they even open in LA, now in 2016. Tim League founder and CEO of Drafthouse, welcomed the audience before playing a special Don't Talk or Text PSA featuring Kevin Bacon. In the PSA the audience reacts to what Kevin is saying and questions why he so angrily yells at them. It was a great start with a fun finish where Mr. Bacon came out and answered questions from abroad, the audience and a gushing Tim League.

Cop Car will both bring back fond memories of childhood movies that put children in danger more than they should and feelings of sheer dread if the officer they stole the car from gets them. Kevin Bacon is the movie, not the two kids that find his cop car.

Sheriff Kretzer (Bacon) is a scary, formulating man whose put into a bad situation when two young boys who are under ten take his cop car for a joy ride. He was up to something sinister out in the middle of nowhere and now he has to set things straight. The film apologetically takes its time with the Sheriff on how he's going to track down his car. And this Sheriff is sh*t-out-of-luck. We see him sweat and formulate a working plan all in the span of a day with hardly any tools, cept' for his wits.

While the Sheriff is calculating how his life might be over we see two boys have the fun of driving a  cop car way to fast an on the open road, and without seat belts mind you, as not a real Dad that still got to me. The boys' exercise in freedom in no way should be copied, it's like the two take a page out of the how to end your life early playbook. All those pages in Ikea furniture how-to-make books that show how a child might be hurt were composed into the brains of these young children, whose names hardly matter. Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) barely get their names in, as we really only see a couple of kids having fun, without much needed supervision.

Both young actors are believable, sometimes scared, soemtimes having fun when the should kids.

Supervision, bad supervision comes with Shea Whigham who plays a mysterious man the boys meet later in the film. He has to win some award for pulling of the most cruel lines to them that made my audience and myself laugh so much. We're all bad people for enjoying his cruel barrage of words on the kids with fierce consequences  for their loved ones for the kids.

When the Sheriff is finally able to catch up to the kids we were all standing on edge in the audience as the supervision of the two boys came to a tussle, a bloody tussle.

You'll be reminded of the title of the film at the end, Cop Car is repeated and the focus of the film, the man driving it was Kevin Bacon. He's not only an executive producer, he's one scary sheriff that will give kids nightmares about police if they're ever able to catch the film.

Cop Car is in theaters now.