Cop Car Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Cop Car Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman September 25, 2015

Kids don't just say the darndest things, they do the darndest things, too. When they're that age -- moving towards middle school -- Every activity is an adventure, every idea a grand plan, every moment a valuable opportunity to discover something great. Of course, the world looks bigger in the eyes of youth, and it looks simpler, too. Consequences seem distant, even if that nagging voice inside says there's reason for worry. What usually begins as a dare or a chance to feel big and strong has a tendency to spiral out of control. Throwing a rock leads to breaking windows, poking around an abandoned car leads to trashing it, a friendly punch leads to an all-out brawl. Director Jon Watts' Cop Car explores the world of innocent, youthful fun and the quickly devolving world that develops around two kids when they stumble across a seemingly abandoned police cruiser and wind up not only on a joyride -- not the brightest of ideas to begin with -- but caught in the middle of something much more dangerous than they could have ever imagined.

It's all fun and games until...it's not.

Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) have run away from home, surviving on a Slim Jim and warm jackets. Their journey eventually leads them to an isolated piece of land where they stumble across a cop car that they soon discover to be abandoned. After daring one another to touch it, their boldness increases and they crawl inside of it. A make-believe action scene leads Travis, the bolder of the two, to find its keys. They start the engine and eventually wind up cruising the back country roads. Little do they know, however, that the car is a central piece of evidence in the wrongdoings of local Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon) who will stop at nothing to get the car -- and everything inside of it -- back under his control.

Cop Car thrives on simplicity. Dialogue is as minimal as necessary, with the only real extracurricular banter taking place in the movie's establishing shots that see Travis leading Harrison down a verbal road towards using the F-word. By the time they stumble upon the car, however, the movie prefers to use actions over words, to tell its story not by bombarding the audience with writers indulgence but instead lean, focused narrative building blocks that gradually, and steadily, lead to a dark climax. The movie's complications become progressively more suffocating for the characters but always remain grounded. There's not a lot of backstory here, either. The kids are apparently running away from home and Kevin Bacon's character seems mixed up in the usual things characters such as his get mixed up in -- drugs, murder, kidnapping -- but the details rightly don't matter. This is the story from the kids' perspectives, and while Cop Car does spend some time alone with Sheriff Kretzer, it does so only as needed to establish his relationship with the car, nothing more and nothing less. The tightness and cohesion are terrific, supported by knowing, confident direction from Jon Watts that altogether help make Cop Car a genuinely great movie.

The real pleasure here, and soon enough the real fear, comes from the kids. The movie's open is innocent enough, and anybody who has ever been a ten-year-old boy can relate to just about everything Travis and Harrison say and do, and the way they say them and do them, too. Their ability to so naturally step into the characters' shoes is uncanny, thanks in large part to a script that essentially asks them to be themselves, particularly early on but even later in the film when their naiveté (countered by a tiny voice the audience can practically hear in Harrison's head screaming for him to drop the entire situation and walk away) gets the best of them as they try things like speeding down the road at 100 MPH or Travis trying to shoot Harrison, who is wearing a bullet proof vest they found in the car. Thank goodness for that safety on the rifle and that heavy double action trigger pull on the Sig. Cop Car is, essentially, wild childhood fantasy meets the serious world of adult insanity. But the movie never seems like a warning sign or even a metaphor for the dangers of youthful indiscretion. It's instead a simple story of a bad choice gone horribly wrong when forgivable innocence inadvertently mixes with dark reality.

Cop Car Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cop Car's 1080p transfer is gorgeous. The image captures, with effortless natural sharpness, every blade of grass, leaf, rough tree trunk, and other natural textures that are so prominent throughout the film. Accumulated dust and grime on the title cop car, textured clothing lines, rough faces, blood, dirt, sweat, pores, and stubble are all revealed with incredible attention to detail. Colors are bold and accurate, with green and golden grasses, leaves, and terrain precisely presented. A sky blue jacket, bright red blood, and other brighter shades are equally exacting. Black levels seen in a few nighttime shots later in the movie satisfy. Skin tones appear accurate to the actors' complexions. Very mild aliasing appears in a couple of distant shots, but there's no evidence of macroblocking, excess noise, or other unwanted intrusions. In total, this is a stunner of an image from Universal.

Cop Car Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cop Car's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is relatively simple. Highlights include light winds that effortlessly blow through the stage, evident particularly early on as the kids make their way towards the cop car. Rustling leaves and grasses are heard in support, with all such effects enjoying a naturally immersive placement in the listening area. The film's climax features a shootout, which spits out gunfire with surprisingly weighty shots that hit hard and lightly reverberate throughout the wide-open expanse seen in the film. Shell casings hit the pavement with a natural clanking sound, too. Dialogue is the primary piece, however, and the spoken word comes through with the expected lifelike clarity found on the best tracks.

Cop Car Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Cop Car contains only one extra. Their First and Last Ride: The Making of 'Cop Car' (1080p. 2:58) is a pure fluff piece that looks inside the cop car, briefly examines the process of making a stunt, and filming a shootout, all intercut with a few clips from the movie. A voucher for a UV/iTunes digital copy is included with purchase.

Cop Car Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cop Car is exactly the sort of movie that movies should be. It's incredibly simple, lean, and in may ways relatable. Whittling it down might lead to a comparison between any old kid-centric Adventure film meets bleaker, more violent adult story. Take the kids from Zathura and drop them into No Country for Old Men and get a pretty good idea of what Cop Car has to offer. It's not quite as good as either of those, but considering how well it's made, how its priorities are to-the-point, how its characters are depicted with beautiful simplicity, how its pacing is terrific, and how its technical construction is top-notch, and it's not far behind. Cop Car is perhaps the best under-the-radar movie of 2015 and Universal's Blu-ray does it technical justice. Video and audio are stellar. Supplements (or, supplement, singular) leave much to be desired, but the movie stands tall on its own merits. Highly recommended.