all shook up
GERARD BUTLER STARTS STRONG, STUMBLES. AGAIN…
COPSHOP 15 FILM OUT NOW CINEMAS
With the release of Greenland on Prime Video earlier this year, the most peculiar thing happened: so urgent and thrilling and sickto-the-stomach-making was this eco-disaster action movie, suddenly the thought of a new Gerard Butler picture was not something to induce shudders.
Well, Copshop is an improvement on the string of leaden, charmless action-thrillers that came in the five or six years leading up to Greenland, but it doesn’t, sadly, complete a onetwo gut-punch to confirm that Butler is indeed the charismatic star we all thought he was when he clenched his six-pack and bellowed, “This is Sparta!” in Zack Snyder’s 300.
Directed and co-scripted by
Joe Carnahan, who himself knows something about starting with verve (Blood, Guts, Bullets And Octane, Narc) then becoming a Hollywood player (The A-Team) then losing his way (Stretch, Boss Level), Copshop opens in the Nevada desert as con artist Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo) hatches a desperate plan
to escape hitman Bob Viddick (Butler). He strikes rookie officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder, stealing the show from her seasoned co-stars) to get himself banged up in clink, only for Viddick to follow suit, orchestrating his own arrest to land in the cell opposite.
Now it’s a case of the pair talking the talk until they get a chance to escape their cages and walk the walk… or rather, beat each other senseless and shoot holes in one another.
For 30 minutes or so, Copshop is chock-full of mystery and edge, and manages to be what so few films can be – cool. It almost plays like one of the many Tarantino rip-offs that cluttered the market in the ’90s, only good, with its sharp visuals and moody, leftfield song choices complemented by vivid dialogue. “You look like Tom Cruise in that Samurai picture no one watched,” is a choice way to ridicule someone’s man-bun.
What a shame, then, that Carnahan’s explosively entertaining and hip start to his thriller slowly descends into standard shoot-’em-up material, losing its firepower once the guns come out. Not even the arrival of a second hitman, this one played by Toby Huss as a colourful psychopath, can prevent audience engagement from dwindling away. An epilogue plays it cool again, and we can’t help but wish for what might have been – but then Copshop’s director and star know just how tricky it is to keep your edge. Jamie Graham