The amount of information a director gives an audience about a film’s characters is tricky. You don’t want to over explain, resulting in a film that feels clunky and too reliant on exposition. But you also don’t want to hold back too much, leaving the audience without an entry point to then empathize with the characters’ conflicts. Sparseness can be admirable, giving us only the barest essentials of “need to know” information, but simply giving us a character and a basic personality trait is not enough. Cop Car steps over the line of getting to know the characters one too many times, often feeling like the people in the story are pieces to a puzzle, not real people. However, the patient, assured pacing and delicate tension-building almost makes up for that misstep.
Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) are a couple of ten-year olds running away from home. Though, their names don’t really matter. Basically, Travis is the rebel kid, and Harrison is the innocent one. We know this because Travis will say “fuck” and Harrison won’t. They stumble upon the titular cop car, abandoned in the woods, and decide to take it for a joy ride. But this is Kevin Bacon‘s cop car. And you do not take Kevin Bacon’s cop car. Oh, I’m sorry. I meant Sheriff Kretzer’s cop car. Again, names — they don’t matter.
In terms of making a fully realized character, Bacon’s sheriff comes the closest. This is mainly due to the fact we see him interact with the outside world, be it gearing up for trouble at his home or running around town looking for a car to steal. We understand how this man approaches his position of power, which unsurprisingly is not in the most admirable fashion, and his motivations for what he is doing in this story. Also, Bacon is a skilled and seasoned enough actor to know how to fill in the blanks if the dialogue does not necessarily spell things out.
The kids, though, are a totally different story. We have no idea why they have run away from home, why they act the way they do, why they are sometimes savvy about guns and cars but other times feel like they have never seen one in their lives, or, most importantly, why these two are friends. That is a lot to hang on a couple of child actors who do not have enough life or work experience yet to know how to tap into all of that stuff, so the writing needs to support them. It just doesn’t. They simply feel like a plot device to get the story started. I would not mind it as much had these not been our two main characters. Bacon may get top billing because of his star status, but this is a story about these boys. And they are one-dimensional nothings when it comes to character.
Director/co-writer Jon Watts and co-writer Christopher D. Ford leave something to be desired on a character and script level, but the same cannot be said for how Watts is able to build tension. With only an eighty-six minute running time, nothing ever feels rushed. Quite the opposite, actually. Every scene feels like an exercise to wring out as much tension as humanly possible, creating some long, edge-of-your-seat scenes. The one that comes to mind first is Bacon’s sheriff attempting to unlock a car with a bootlace. Watts lets that scene play out forever, and the longer it goes on the less you are breathing. The only attempt at tension building that feels superfluous is a subplot involving Camryn Manheim, a woman who spots the boys driving the cop car and no one believing her about it. Either that subplot needed to be expanded more or cut out completely, and I am in the camp of the latter.
Watts displays some of the finest thriller craftsmanship visually I have seen of late, and him and editors Megan Brooks and Andrew Hasse have put together some truly great sequences. I just wish it was all in service of a story and characters I gave more than a passing interest in. When there are so few people in the movie, I should get a sense of who these people are and why I should be invested in their story. You can throw all the expert craft you want at me for distraction, and for a lot of the movie, it worked. However, the farther you come away from it, the less the craft has an impact on you, and the flaws of the characters become more and more apparent. As you’re watching Cop Car, it’s a pretty enjoyable experience, but it’s not a film that will stay with you much longer after you step out of the theater.
