Cop (1988)

Lloyd Hopkins (James Woods), a homicide dick with very peculiar notions about women, is so shocked by a gruesome murder that he obsessively wraps himself up in the case. Instinctively, he believes the killer has struck before - specialising in 'innocent' women - and will slaughter again. Despite his wife walking out on him and the harassment of his born-again boss, Hopkins goes after the psycho, and digs up and incredibly complicated series of crimes and misdemeanours going back 15 years involving an on-the-take deputy sheriff (Charles Haid), a neurotic feminist poet (Lesley Ann Warren), and some nasty business with the graduating class of '72 in a local high school.

Cop starts out as a straight police thriller, with Woods effortlessly holding centre screen as he tackles the case with any amount of snappy dialogue, and demonstrates his unconventionality by telling his daughter bedtime stories about what a shitstorm life is on the streets. However, when the plot starts to unravel, things get very bizarre indeed. The detective work proceeds through sudden leaps and dangling plot threads that are never taken up, and are resolved through the revelation of an unbelievably complicated - not to say unbelievable - motivation for the mass murderer.

Despite all the tangles of the plot, this is definitely worth catching for its trespassing into a very dangerous area between significance and bathos as Woods goes all out to create a cop character crazier and more noble than Dirty Harry, and Warren quivers affectingly as one of the most unusual and interesting leading ladies in recent years. Cops and feminists may well dislike this film, but they can't accuse it of stereotyping them. Several scenes switch alarmingly between hard-edged comedy and deadly seriousness, and the finale is daringly ambiguous.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: City Limits (issue unknown)

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