Post by Eddie Love on Mar 12, 2011 17:09:01 GMT -5
In the early 80s as James Ellroy was beginning his scorched-Earth takeover of the American crime fiction landscape, he was initially encouraged to start a series character to reel in a fan base. The result was only a brief trilogy of novels featuring the L.A. cop Lloyd Hopkins. The first of these books was adapted with little fanfare into the 1988 film COP starring and produced by James Woods. Ellroy would see greater cinematic glory 10 years later with the classic adaptation of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, but the earlier film holds up as a decent picture and a terrific star turn.
A hilarious anonymous tip (heard over the opening credits) eventually leads Robbery Homicide Division Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins to the site of a brutal murder in Hollywood. The victim is a young woman and the pursuit of her murderer leads Hopkins to the conclusion that a serial killer, going back some 15 years, is at work. Hopkins becomes obsessed with catching the fiend, regardless of the toll it takes on his already strained home life and career.
I know today Ellroy has said he cringes at passages in Blood on the Moon the basis for this movie, but I recall loving it when I read it about 20 years ago. What I mainly remember is that the book outlines the horrifying origins of both cop and killer, and their divergent paths and ultimate showdown. I don’t remember much else, though it seems to me the film adaptation may be a little unsteady in some of the story’s details. There’s a subplot concerning sexual swingers I’m not certain fits in with the rest of the picture, nor is it clear how the killer, who we see milling around in the background, pieces any of that stuff together. Plus, the entire solution to the crimes revolves around our detective happening to question for the purposes of research the one person in all of Los Angeles who is the focal point of the killer’s mania.
In another departure from the novel, the film is almost entirely absent of any atmosphere. It’s set and shot in L.A., but you’d hardly know it as there are no establishing shots that give us any sense of the place, which is strange given how vital the whole L.A. milieu is to Ellroy’s books.
However, COP is still a tight, rewarding little picture, mainly because Woods is simply wonderful in it. He would go on to make a certain degree of showboating intensity his central style, but here he’s actually pretty laidback. (Granted that’s “laidback” by James Woods' standards.) In fact, even though his character is a bit of an asshole, Woods comes across as very likable, almost boyishly so. He has a bit where he recounts criminal cases as bedtime stories to his young daughter that you’d think would come across as terribly contrived, but he plays it perfectly and without any ironic commentary, you actually feel this guy would not only really do this but would relish it. Otherwise, there are scenes of him just sitting around staring at the evidence in the case trying to put things together, and he makes these moments really compelling. And these are some long scenes of him just ruminating, but you don’t mind, ‘cause he’s fascinating.
Most strikingly, he has a scene where he listens to the traumatic back-story of a damaged woman he’s interviewing and when she leaves the room, he seems to exhale and you’re aware of the condescension and patronizing contempt with which he holds this woman. Like I said, he’s an asshole, but you just can’t stop grooving on watching him.
The woman in question is an uptight, feminist poet played by Leslie Ann Warren and Hopkins’ and the film’ attitude towards this character underscore the picture’s frank and dated misogyny. (The very idea of a “woman’s bookstore” as a den of misanthropy seems like just the type of threatening caricature you would see around this period in the late 80s.) Ultimately, the film posits a pretty tortured notion that the illusions of women who live without men are comparable to those of a small girl (somehow) and these benighted ideas jeopardize themselves and others. Or something like that. It’s pretty confused, but I love films that are upfront about their prejudices and this film (and Woods generally) certainly is. Warren gives a brittle, mannered performance as the highly-strung woman, but I don’t care because she’s Leslie Ann Warren and I love her in anything, and I thought her take on the role was very witty.
Her scenes and those of Hopkins and his antagonists on the force are masterfully played. His boss (who looks like Daryl Gates) is a religious tight-ass out to get him, and while theses passages might seem very ho-hum-haven’t-we-seen-this-a- hundred-times, they’re very well acted. It’s funny to watch Woods dial it back and try to get in the guy’s good graces before he, of course, eventually goes off on the guy. Maybe best of all are scenes between Woods and the (mirrored) shady Sheriff’s deputy played by Charles Haid where Jimmy aces him in some mind games.
Unfortunately, the killer, once we finally meet him, is drippy and nondescript. Plus, the climax of the picture (the set-up of which is more than a little reminiscent of Steve McQueen’s last movie THE HUNTER) is a little absurd. ***SPOLIER*** Hopkins blows away the unarmed suspect, because, don’t you just know some lawyer will enter a reason-of-insanity defense. But seriously, what cop would do this? How many killings is the guy responsible for that he could provide information on, even if he was sitting in a padded cell?
And I laughed more than a few times at how shoddy the police work is in this picture. No one wears gloves at the crime scenes and they touch pretty much whatever they want. They also chain smoke. (I was waiting for the cliché moment you always get of someone lighting up just so someone else can say, “Who’s smoking at my crime scene?!?”)
Anyway, despite being saddled with a generic title, COP holds up as a solid, slow-burning thriller, and a reminder of what a unique talant James Woods was he his star was rising.
