Cop Car Trailer: Let’s Be Cops The Early Years

This looks like a difficult movie to gauge from a trailer, and that’s probably because it’s a difficult movie to market. I’m guessing. From what I can tell, on the one side it’s a story of two young runaways (Hays Wellford and James Freedson-Jackson) who steal a police cruiser and go for a somewhat innocent joyride. But on the other side, the cop whose car they take is a bad man with a badass mustache, a corrupt sheriff who as far as I know winds up killing these kids in the end. Is it a light drama about boys being boys or is it a dark thriller about a man being a maniac? Or is it both?

When Cop Car debuted at Sundance, our own Rob Hunter gave it a fairly positive review while noting that it does have a jarring change of tone in the third act, understandably so. I knew it: it’s all Millions and The Goonies and Stand by Me until it’s suddenly full-on Bad Lieutenant and little boys are bloodied in a ditch somewhere. No spoilers, I honestly don’t know. But I want to find out. I also have been hypnotized by Kevin Bacon’s magic stache and can’t say no.

“The film coasts by on the playful bliss of youth and Bacon’s reveling in playing a vile character who’s not quite as put together and coordinated as he thinks,” Rob wrote back in January. “It’s a slight affair — fitting for its 87 minute duration — but the performances and humor make it an affair worth having.”

Writer/director Jon Watts and co-writer Christopher D. Ford previously gave us Clown, the plainly dark and twisted horror flick about a guy who becomes possessed by a birthday clown costume. But Cop Car is apparently more of a comedy, as much as it’s hard to tell from this spot. Watts comes from a background with The Onion News Network, so he’s presumably more at home with humor. Before teaming up with Watts, Ford wrote the dry sci-fi comedy Robot & Frank.

Their latest seems like something you can’t really tell if you’d like from the trailer or the reviews or anything but your own eyes. You just have to see it and find out if it works for you. You can do so when it hits theaters on August 7th.

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