Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, and Alexis Louder in Joe Carnahan’s COPSHOP deliver more than an action-packed thrill ride. Fast and furious, it’s no holds barred action. But it’s not just the action that sets COPSHOP on fire; it’s good characters and bringing something extra to the performance of each. COPSHOP is a helluva ride!!
Writer/Director Joe Carnahan is a master when it comes to action and using that as a storytelling tool. Just look at The Grey or The A-Team or Boss Level or El Chicano. He pushes the envelope, and pushes hard, with the story, performance, action, and production values, be it as director, writer, producer or any combination thereof. Put him together with producing partner and actor Frank Grillo, as we have seen with a few films now, and the result is electrifying. Now bring Gerard Butler and Alexis Louder into the mix with COPSHOP and it’s explosive.
Starring Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, Alexis Louder, Toby Huss, and Ryan O’Nan, among others, COPSHOP is the story of con artist Teddy Murretto whom we meet in the Nevada desert as he’s tearing up the empty highway in his bullet-ridden Crown Victoria. Hot on his tail though is hitman Bob Viddick. Knowing it’s only a matter of time before Viddick catches up to him, Murretto sucker punches Valerie Young, a rookie cop who goes by the book and takes her job very seriously. Lucky for Murretto, that punch is all it took to get him locked up behind bars, safe from Viddick. Or is he? With a similar thought process, Viddick feigns drunk and gets himself arrested and tossed in the same jail as Murretto in a cell 8 feet away. While Officer Young is forced to be a very terse babysitter sitting in the hallway between the two men while interrogating them, trying to get to the truth of the situation at hand, corruption within the small-town force is taking hold upstairs with an all-out war about to begin thanks to the arrival of Anthony Lamb, a totally off-the-rails nutjob of an assassin determined to take out Murretto, Viddick, and anyone else in his path.
Grillo and Butler are outstanding as Murretto and Viddick, respectively, but when you get down to brass tacks, COPSHOP is Alexis Louder’s film. What Jodie Turner-Smith brought to The Last Ship television series, Louder brings to COPSHOP tenfold. Her interplay with Grillo and Butler is compelling and she matches each beat-for-beat with not only character performance of nuance, sarcasm, dialogue, facial expressiveness and body language, and vocal cadence, but she soars with action. This is Louder’s breakout film and performance and she could do no better than going head to head with Frank Grillo and Gerard Butler with Joe Carnahan steering the ship.
Grillo and Butler are fabulous and are not only effortless in their action acumen, but in adding layers to their performances. They truly embody their characters. As “facilitator”/con man Murretto, Grillo sports a man bun (hilarious!) and always has some of that “snake oil salesman” slime oozing from him and his 1970’s disco pimp outfit. But it’s the intensity of Grillo’s eyes that intrigue me with this performance.
For Butler, he looks much like his “Big Nick” persona from Den of Thieves, but adds some Mel Gibson “Martin Riggs” put-on insanity from Lethal Weapon and ices that with quiet knowing laughter that makes one think of a mischievous kid putting one over on mom. But the strength of Butler’s performance as Viddick comes with Viddick’s conviction to a hitman’s code. And part of that code lets Butler develop a powerful and believable arc that melds perfectly with the maturing journey of Louder’s Officer Young. A very emotional and telling scene in the third act between Butler and Louder speaks volumes as to the heart of Viddick. Love it.
Supporting characters are deliciously disgusting – like Ryan O’Nan’s Huber (a slovenly pig that looks like he never washes his hair – would raise my red flags about him as an officer 24/7) and Toby Huss’ Anthony Lamb. Lamb is a complete and total nutjob and feels exactly like a character that Carnahan would create. But Huss’ performance is off the rails! Batshit brilliant insanity! One of the best supporting performances I’ve seen this year!
The story is well-plotted and constructed with and the unfolding of it by way of Young’s “interrogation” of her two perps in the underground holding cells as she gets Murretto talking with Viddick interjecting from behind, is not only providing all the exposition we need to know about these characters, but it’s fun thanks to Louder’s sarcastic command of the boys. The back and forth among the three is not only witty at times but so well-paced, peeling back the story like an onion. Most intriguing, however, is this idea of a white-collar criminal vs a hitman with one ethical cop sorting out the story between them and trying to get to the truth. It’s a very interesting dichotomy for a story and one that Carnahan and co-writer Kurt McLeod fully flesh out through characters.
As comes as no surprise with Carnahan at the helm, the visual tonal bandwidth is fantastic. Reteaming with cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz after El Chicano and Boss Level, the visuals are rich, desaturated into a bluish wash in the holding cells, contrasting that with some saturation and fluorescent lighting upstairs in the police station, and then going balls to the wall with the metaphoric super saturated fiery inferno of hell as Murretto sets the place on fire. This really allows us to hone in on the performances – which truly are character studies – and the action; the latter of which is focused and intense.
Nice to see Carnahan working with Kevin Hale who was originally part of the editing team on The Grey, but here serves as sole editor. Pacing is even and effective. Never lags and yet gives you some breathing room. When the film ends you don’t realize that 104 minutes have gone by! Having said that, I suspect that there is a longer Director’s Cut floating around somewhere and I would love to see that.
Right from the get-go, we know we’re in for a rockin’ and rollin’ ride thanks to the opening title song giving us a kind of vintage Matt Helm vibe which composer Clinton Shorter then plays upon giving us a score that at times has an almost Starsky & Hutch feel. Needledrops capture that 70s and 80s cop show tone perfectly.
And dare I say, I want more; a sequel with Officer Young and Bob Viddick returning with Louder and Butler and, of course, Joe Carnahan.
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Written by Joe Carnahan and Kurt McLeod
Cast: Gerard Butler, Frank Grillo, Alexis Louder, Toby Huss, Ryan O’Nan
by debbie elias, August 8, 2021
