Copshop | Film Review

In the latest entry of the wildest cinematic partnership currently engaged, director Joe Carnahan (Boss Level, The A-Team) and tireless actor Frank Grillo (also Boss Level, as well as half of the films released this year) reunite for Copshop, a relentlessly hyperviolent and stylish action flick that manages to toss Gerard Butler into the insanity. What’s even crazier? They’re not even the best part of the movie.

Copshop opens with Grillo’s Teddy Murretto on the run from someone, he desperately ditches a stolen squad car, and then promptly sucker-punches rookie officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder), ensuring a quick trip to the most remote police station in the Nevada desert. While Teddy stays mum on his motives, thinking he’s far from harm’s reach, gruff hitman Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler) gets tossed in the drunk tank right next to Teddy… and Bob isn’t leaving without Teddy’s head on a stick. Once Anthony Lamb (an absolutely hilarious Toby Huss) arrives to compete for Teddy’s contract, it’s time to get weird.

Copshop rings that 70s bell of brutal action tied into a simmering thriller, and initially felt as though it was leading into a modern-day take on John Carpenter’s classic, Assault on Precinct 13. But as the story progresses – I will avoid spoilers as you deserve to enjoy the film naturally – Carnahan and co-writer Kurt McLeod deliver a twisty pulp narrative that builds our three main characters skillfully until everyone’s cards are effectively on the table.

The action in Copshop is fast, vicious, and often times out-of-nowhere. That’s a compliment. Far too often in films like these, we know where every set-piece is headed. The smaller, random bits of action spring forth to keep us off-guard as Carnahan sets up the showier (though tad more predictable yet still entertaining) finale.

What keeps us on our toes is the electric casting. Toby Huss as Lamb is the raging psychotic every film like this absolutely needs. Unpredictable, lethal, savage, and damn entertaining. Each and every scene Lamb pops up in is a blessing of absurdist dialogue, and forces you to edge up on your seat wondering what this lunatic will do next.

Frank Grillo is personally one of my favorite actors working today (and if you get a chance to see his own version of a dancing psychotic in the upcoming Ida Red, take it). Here, Teddy wears very silky 70s hair extensions and Grillo’s take is a bit more mysterious, as officer Young is slowly trying to grasp why all of these maniacs want this simpleton low-life axed. Grillo is probably the actor served less here, as Teddy’s motives in the final act are a bit cloudy and ultimately ding the script a bit, but he nonetheless performs admirably, distancing our perception of the truth as we roll into that last hurrah.

Gerard Butler never seems to get the credit he deserves, so let me state this unequivocally: Butler is a great actor who can make the most mundane works pop. He seems to love genre filmmaking, and those films – though not often stellar on their own – are always better for having him. Bob Viddick is a complicated man, but steadfast in his occupational goals. Butler brings this routine character, one we have all seen a billion times in films before, vividly to life while also entrenching a tinge of empathy along the way. In lesser hands, the film simply wouldn’t work.

All that said, Alexis Louder is the star of Copshop. Valerie Young is a cocksure rookie officer who loves to play quick draw with her pistol in the stationhouse and is itching for the opportunity to swiftly take down a perp. Young is also the smartest character in any given situation, readily paying attention to character motives and evolving scenarios while studying the room. She is quick, intelligent, witty, and assuredly portrayed by Alexis Louder in a star-making performance. In a film where you have Grillo, Butler, and Huss all vying equally for their fair share of on-screen antics, it is quite impressive that Louder still found room to shine. I cannot wait to see what she does next.

The world of film could use a bit more of everyone associated with this one. What initially appeared as a tweaked take on Assault on Precinct 13, instead evolves into a multi-layered script with shifting loyalties and surprising turns. Though the final act finds itself a tiny bit muddled in certain aspects, Copshop emerges as the kick-in-the-balls start to the fall movie season we all needed.