A movie named after a car. How dumb can it be?
This is not a movie about “the police”, there is no cheerleading for law enforcement aka “our heroes!!” nonsense. If you have a “blue line” sticker on your car, please move along. Same if you are in the “cop hating” crowd. I feel like this movie must be from another dimension, something that can’t exist in the current zeitgeist. Anyway, this is a movie about a man and his work.
One of the things that always bothered me in American movies is the unrelenting need to “be positive” to the point its toxic. Hollywood can’t do drama, really. If it does, it is always framed like a “heroic journey” of sorts. The line of right and wrong is barely glanced at.
The Ford Crown Victoria, or Crown Vic, the omnipresent fleet car of choice used by virtually all police forces (and many other government offices as well) in North America has been chosen as a title for this movie, despite the fact that by 2019, the newest Crown Vic in service was 8 years old and most forces had switched to the Ford Taurus or Dodge Chargers by then. Why was that choice made you might ask? There is a reason, find out by watching it.
Early in the movie, we are presented with the duality of new cop/old cop that develops as something seen on Training Day (2001) but since the characters objectives are not so distant from each other, their relationship is explored much further. There is no “this is wrong but I will try to ignore it for now”, there is always some level of uncertainty of what actually is 100% wrong. You can also most certainly notice a father-son like dynamic, even by the perceived age of the characters.
A movie named after a car. You would obviously expect a dumb plot, a lot of tape wasted trying to fill time and lukewarmly cater to a mostly male audience that is familiar with the Crown Vic (maybe that was the idea?) but the only thing that ends up happening is the movie being noticed in the discount DVD shelf of some store.
However, the movie is so much more than that. The symbolism of a gone-by father figure, going away when it’s his time, together with his work tools (the crown vic) in his last day at work trying desperately to tie up some unfinished work he was not able to do during his career, likely thru fault of his own. He just goes, and does it. He is too old to care, there is not much left for him. It might come across as righteous, to the ecstasy of a more righteous crowd, but it’s also enveloped in wrath. Is this movie going to be a future cult classic?
The young cop, noticing the job is not as straight forward as he thought, tries to navigate the many situations they end up in, doing his best not to get in trouble and do the right thing, sometimes frivolously. Many lessons learned about human nature that night.
As the movie evolves, the situations that pitted the characters against each other come to a close and they find themselves back on the same side. There is nothing new on the western front.
There is gut wrenching tension back to back and there is always something happening. The director Joel Souza (also known for being a Beetlejuice cosplayer) did a great job in my opinion (he wrote AND directed this movie) and the actors were very convincing, on par with AAA stars.
I recommend this movie. Your girlfriend might not understand it, but any self respecting man should.
Note. The Crown Vic is a good car, I had two. Both former police cruisers.
