ALEXIS LOUDER STEALS THE SHOW IN ‘COPSHOP’
Alexis Louder is going to be a star.
Nah, take that back. Alexis Louder is a star. She’s absolutely magnetic in “Copshop,” an energetically entertaining B-movie joyride through the visuals, music and blood-splattered plots of such ’70s crime films as “Super Fly” and “Assault on Precinct 13,” with a detour through the American Western for good measure.
Louder, from “The Tomorrow War” and “Watchmen,” is Valerie Young, a cop in a dusty, sunbaked Nevada town where it seems nothing much ever happens. That is until Teddy Murretto (a long-haired Frank Grillo) shows up, acting crazy and punching Young in the middle of a wedding brawl she’s trying to break up.
But Murretto isn’t as unhinged as he appears. He wants to go to jail because he thinks it will keep him safe from a hired assassin, Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), who’s hot on his heels. But two — namely Viddick — can play that game as well, and he ends up in a cell across from Murretto. And there’s another killer in the mix, the creepy Anthony Lamb (the notable character actor Toby Huss), who’s after both.
So, Young’s normally uneventful police station — overseen, in true ‘70s fashion, by a no-nonsense, barking chief — is suddenly alive with enough gunplay to make Scarface wince. And it’s up to Young to save the day.
Directed by Joe Carnahan (“Smokin’ Aces,” “The Grey”) and co-written by Carnahan with Kurt McLeod, “Copshop” keeps its tongue firmly in cheek without tipping over into cartoon. Though it’s Butler who’s top-billed, it’s the rest of the cast that really
shines. There’s the always reliable Grillo and a genuinely creepy Huss, whose psycho-killer version of Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 hit “Freddie’s Dead” (a running musical theme throughout the film)
is worth the price of admission alone. But it’s Louder — playing a young woman who may be in over her head but refuses to drown — who is such a forceful presence that she is by far the most memorable thing about “Copshop.”
No doubt, “Copshop” will remind many of Quentin Tarantino and his late-night, grindhouse aesthetic. There is a shared retro sensibility — Clinton Shorter’s score and Juan Miguel Azpiroz’s cinematography certainly bear a ’70s throwback appeal — but “Copshop” doesn’t feel like merely a Tarantino facsimile. Still, it may be that element that helps sell “Copshop” to young audiences who wouldn’t know “Freddie’s Dead” from “The Evil Dead.”
But the true worth of “Copshop” is revealed in the closing moments. It’s one of the relatively few films these days that leaves the door open for a sequel where the reaction isn’t a roll of the eyes but a clap of the hands.