Copshop - Scontro a fuoco

Everything you've seen before but with a lot more style, some great direction and production and an outstanding performance from Alexis Louder. Getting in, to break out has seldom been better than this which is quite refreshing in these times of repetition.

A comical drama that doesn't conform to expectations with an 80's presentation style, lively characters and isolated setting. It doesn't have much of a plot and it could have been a lot snappier, but the acting is good and it does hold your attention. The action scenes are few and far between and use slow motion a bit too much, but are good enough.

Grillo, Butler and Louder gave outstanding performances, and although the satirical writing was entertaining, this would've been much better if the story were taken more serious.

Then there's the even bigger issue of the huge hole left in the story, the one which didn't explain any of the twists and turns. It's almost as if the dog ate pages from the middle of the screenplay.

For the 107 minute runtime, there wasn't enough substance. Either lots of minutes needed to be trimmed down, or preferably, more backstory/substance written in. It felt like the story was more about Louder's character, and we're supposed to ignore why the things that are happening to her, are happening.

It's a shame no one picked up on these huge issues, because the directing was excellent, as was the cinematography, score and gore effects. Its a good one-time watch, and thus a 7/10 from me.

Positives:

• While the three male leads have fun with their roles, the star of the show for me was the (unknown to me) Alexis Louder. She delivers a really strong performance here, with a confident stillness in some of her close-ups.

• There are a number of nice lines in the script, some of which made me laugh out loud, which I wasn't expecting to do.

• As a 'park your brain at the door' shoot-em-up, the ending is fun, similar in many ways I thought to the claustrophobic violence of "Free Fire".

Negatives:

• Here's YET another example of a script that is downright insulting to the audience's intelligence. There are some genuine "WTF" moments in this script. I can't go into details without dropping spoilers, but the biggest of these - you'll know it when you see it - is a genuine "HANG ON A MINUTE!!!" moment.

• The sound mix drowns out a lot of the (already drawly and indistinct) dialogue with the incessant music. It's really difficult to pick up on some of the lines.

• There's something surprisingly 'retro' about the whole movie, right down to the use of split screen at the end. The titles feel as if they were from a 70's TV show like Kojak. I could imagine this would work well... if the movie had actually been set in the 70's!

Summary Thoughts on "Copshop": There's almost a good little action film buried in here struggling to get out. Alexis Louder makes a very positive impression with the best parts of the film happening when she is verbally sparring with Butler. But a good action movie needs to keep things credible, albeit on the edge of credibility (e.g. John McClane's lift shaft fall in "Die Hard" is very much on the boundary, if a little over it). Thanks to some ludicrous decisions within the script, this one lost all credibility for me and took me right out of the story.

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Grillo with a man bun like Tom Cruise in Last Samurai which nobody saw was epic.

The movie tried hard to be like Assault on Precinct 13 but the lack of atmosphere, tension n suspense prevented it.

In fact the low budget VFW starring Stephen Lang is a decent take on defending the 'Alamo'.