Undoubtedly, it is a sick yet rather fitting irony that mainstream Hollywood movie like, say, John Wick (2014), are oftentimes advertised with the line “From the Producers of…,” as if producers are the true auteurs and were not oftentimes behind destroying films and/or taking them away from their directors. As cinema history has demonstrated, producers are rarely artistic people. Sure, there are important historical film figures like D.W. Griffith, Alexander Korda and Stanley Kubrick that both produced and directed, but they typically did this as a means to maintain artistic control of their films and not simply because they were opportunistic producers that used their clout as a means to later establish a film directing career. Indeed, it is no coincidence that very few producers would go onto to become directors, though many have surely tried, including figures ranging from Bernd Eichinger to Richard D. Zanuck’s widow Lili Fini Zanuck to Denise Di Novi, but probably none of these individuals are quite as interesting and neglected as Kubrick’s early career producer James B. Harris. Indeed, as been mentioned by many people writing about the producer turned director, Kubrick once remarked to Harris, who collaborated with him on such classics as Paths of Glory (1957) and Lolita (1962), in late 1962 that, “You’ll never know complete satisfaction until you’ve tried your hand at directing,” which he ultimately accomplished only a couple years later with his little-seen Anglo-American Melvillian Cold War thriller The Bedford Incident (1965) starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier. While Harris arguably achieved his greatest and certainly his most idiosyncratic artistic success with his second feature Some Call It Loving (1973) aka Sleeping Beauty—a sort of similarly esoteric counterpart to his former partner Kubrick’s somewhat uneven swansong Eyes Wide Shut (1999)—Harris’ fourth feature Cop (1988) probably best epitomizes his talents and signature traits as a filmmaker that perfected pulp during an era when the true grit of such tasteful trash had certainly fallen out of vogue.
Based on the dark crime novel Blood on the Moon (1984) by James Ellroy—the first book in the writer's Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy—the film is a gleefully politically incorrect 1980s noir-ish crime-drama that acts as a sort of wonderfully venomous antidote to the fun, sun, and flashy neon multiculturalism of Miami Vice. Grittier and all-around superior to Curtis Hanson’s much better known Ellroy adaptation L.A. Confidential (1997), the film also arguably has a secondary auteur in the form of James Woods, who not only played the eponymous lead but also acted as its co-producer (notably, the actor also starred in Harris’ previous film Fast-Walking (1982) in a vaguely similar role). Of course, considering Woods’ relatively recent virtual blacklisting from Hollywood due to his right-wing political views and battles with liberals, communists, and antifa losers on Twitter, Cop—a film with a titular LAPD detective that is among the most radically ‘reactionary’ and culturally pessimistic police officers in cinema history—features, in many ways, the actor in what is arguably the most fitting and fully realized role of his entire rather singular career. In short, it feels like Woods was born to play the lead. Indeed, as much as I love William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), it seems like Michael Bay’s Bad Boys (1995) when compared to the uncompromising cynicism and misanthropy of Harris’ film. Like an all the more morally dubious thinking man’s Death Wish (1974) featuring an 1980s West Coast take on the completely cracked cop-driven cultural cynicism of The French Connection (1971), albeit with more respect for cops, the film makes nods to various crime sub-genres while also subtly commenting on said sub-genres without seeming even remotely pretentious or overly intellectual. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Cop is a cop's cop film, so long as the cop is not an uptight by-the-book type.
Notably, at the very beginning of his 3 out of 4 star review of the film, Roger Ebert—a man whose girth was only transcended by his tendency to get preposterously offended by films like some uppity queen—argued, “Anyone without a history of watching James Woods in the movies might easily misread COP. They might think this is simply a violent, sick, contrived exploitation picture, and that would certainly be an accurate description of its surfaces. But Woods operates in this movie almost as if he were writing his own footnotes. He uses his personality, his voice and his quirky sense of humor to undermine the material and comment on it, until COP becomes an essay on this whole genre of movie. And then, with the movie’s startling last shot, Woods slams shut the book.” Luckily for viewers, especially of the less than intellectually gifted sort, the film is certainly no academic study, let alone any sort of serious art film, yet it does bring a certain unrivaled refinement to cultural pessimism and social decay; ingredients that any real-life cop is all too familiar with. Probably unlike a large majority of viewers, I have a certain personal familiarity with police officers to distinguish the difference between tawdry Tinseltown buffoonery and a certain psychological realism and nuance of character that makes the film believable enough to those familiar with real-life men in blue. While films based on the works of real-life cop turned novelist Joseph Wambaugh like The New Centurions (1972) and The Onion Field (1979) also starring Woods, demonstrate a certain matter-of-fact respect for the law enforcement trade, Cop almost achieves a sort of almost metaphysical understanding of the sort of dispirited spirit that comes with spending many years cavorting with coke-addled hookers and dodging bullets from crack-addled renegade negro thugs. Indeed, in its no-holds-barred approach to depicting a Hollywood inhabited by corrupt cocksucking cops, quasi-autistic artsy fartsy serial killers, and low-rent crooks, the film is as anti-Hollywood as 1980s films come and in the tradition of the great nihilistic works of classic film noir.
Although it might seem like a peculiar theme for a neo-noir featuring a policeman as an antihero, one of the most potent central themes of Cop is that it takes a rather brutal approach to depicting the perils of Princess Syndrome (PS) and female entitlement and how these things have created a world of exceedingly unhappy women that sometimes grow up to be hookers or, even worse, feminists, due to the high expectations that society instilled in them as impressionable little girls. Indeed, the titular propagandist is so disgusted with the way that society lies to children about the reality of the world that, to the chagrin of his wife, he excitedly tells his daughter brutal police stories each night before bed as an entertaining way to expose her to the harsh realities of the world. In fact, he notably sums up his rather pessimistic worldview to his unsympathetic wife as follows, “Let me tell you something you should get through your head. They’re all little girls, Jen. Every one of them. Every one of those pathetic souls who eventually does herself in is a little girl. Every neurotic who lies on a couch…and pays some asshole shrink good money to listen to her bullshit is a little girl. Every hooker out hustling her ass for a pimp…who winds up with a dyke, a habit, or wasted by some psychopath, is a little girl. All these little girls have one thing in common. You know what that is? Disillusionment. And it always comes from the same thing, expectations. The greatest woman-killer of all time. A terminal disease that starts way back when they’re all just little girls. When they’re being fed all the bullshit…about being entitled to happiness like it’s a birthright. That’s what you don’t understand…when to stop perpetrating the myths that ruin their lives. Innocence kills, Jen. Believe me. It kills. I see it every fucking day of my life.”
While the antihero is a reasonably violent man that regularly kills criminals and cheats on his wife, the film reveals that he is completely right when it comes to female disillusionment. While the antihero is a sort of ruthless realist-cum-pessimist that can smell bullshit a mile away, it is, somewhat ironically, a romantic poet that is depicted as an unhinged lunatic and pathological serial killer in what can be possibly interpreted as director Harris' (possibly unconscious) view of ‘artiste’ types. In other words, in the world of Cop, only irrational women and psychopaths are crazy enough to believe that there is still romance and beauty in the world. Needless to say, the film also reveals that there is a very fine line between cops and criminals and that there is no such thing as heroes; just guys that are hard and tough enough to take out the subhuman trash. Indeed, James Wood’s unforgettable eponymous character is less a hero than a rabid social watchdog that has developed a decidedly dehumanizing talent for hunting down sick and criminal minds. Indeed, if the antihero were not a cop, he would probably be some sort of hit man or organized crime leader.
While the antihero is a reasonably violent man that regularly kills criminals and cheats on his wife, the film reveals that he is completely right when it comes to female disillusionment. While the antihero is a sort of ruthless realist-cum-pessimist that can smell bullshit a mile away, it is, somewhat ironically, a romantic poet that is depicted as an unhinged lunatic and pathological serial killer in what can be possibly interpreted as director Harris' (possibly unconscious) view of ‘artiste’ types. In other words, in the world of Cop, only irrational women and psychopaths are crazy enough to believe that there is still romance and beauty in the world. Needless to say, the film also reveals that there is a very fine line between cops and criminals and that there is no such thing as heroes; just guys that are hard and tough enough to take out the subhuman trash. Indeed, James Wood’s unforgettable eponymous character is less a hero than a rabid social watchdog that has developed a decidedly dehumanizing talent for hunting down sick and criminal minds. Indeed, if the antihero were not a cop, he would probably be some sort of hit man or organized crime leader.
You immediately know that Cop is not a movie for leftists, ethno-masochists, and pussies because the opening credits is juxtaposed with a laughably idiotic 911 call from some unseen gangster negro that bitches to the operator, “I should be home, like, watching THE FLINTSTONES, or some shit,” and then nonchalantly confesses his criminal trade while reporting a murder, stating, “I was gonna hit this place in Hollywood until I seen what was inside. Heavy shit went down in there, man. Like something out of a Peckinpah movie. You better send some cops right away to Aloha Regency, Apartment B.” The scenario that the nameless/faceless negro is talking about is less like something out of a Peckinpah movie than something out of Tobe Hopper’s classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), as the grisly scene in question involves a female corpse hanging upside from a ceiling like a gutted cow carcass. The film's antihero, LAPD detective Sgt. Lloyd Hopkins (James Woods), is the first people to arrive at the crime scene and he almost immediately comes to the conclusion that the victim was killed by some sort of art fag serial killer due a piece of poetry he soon finds addressed to her that reads, “You grieved me more than all the rest.” As Hopkins soon discovers while looking around her apartment, the victim was a feminist journalist named Julia Niemeyer that owned feminist polemics with absurd titles like Rage in the Womb. Notably, Hopkins spends a great deal of time at the crime scene before contacting his police department, as if he needs to personally meditate on the madness of the murder by himself without any distractions, especially not the stupid theories of other cops. All these clues will ultimately lead Hopkins to hot babes that he fucks or wants to fuck, as the antihero is certainly a man that likes to both work hard and play hard, though it seems he actually prefers the former as ‘workaholic’ would be too bland and generic of a description for the fanatically enterprising antihero. Unlike the killer, who is some warped male feminist type, Hopkins really cares about women, or as his much despised Christian boss Captain Fred Gaffney (Raymond J. Barry)—an uptight asshole and bozo bureaucrat that prides himself on playing by the rules—complains to him, “Everyone knows you have a wild hair up your ass about murdered women.” In short, Hopkins, who is a great cop that is not beneath fighting dirty, makes it his personal mission to catch the serial killer and he more or less destroys his entire life in the process, but such is the price of such uncompromising fanaticism.
Aside from his quite predatory desire to catch the killer, Hopkins does not seem all that worried about completely ruining his life because his personal life is pretty much in shambles. Indeed, after his wife Jen (Jan McGill) catches him telling their prepubescent daughter Penny about a personal police story about a “queen who did full drag” and “ripped off about $5,000 in cash and a shitload of pharmaceutical speed and heavyweight downers…in less than a month,” the two get in a heated verbal dispute where the antihero discusses the deleterious effects of telling fairy tales like ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ to little girls and how it can only end in bitter disillusionment. When his wife tells him, “Lloyd, I think you’re a very sick man…in need of some real help,” Hopkins, who seems to have nil sexual desire for his wife despite his overall virility, skips bed to go on a stakeout with his best friend ‘Dutch’ (Charles Durning). Hopkins is such good buds with Dutch—a fat, white-haired, and somewhat unintentionally goofy yet smart and loyal chap that is nearing retirement—that he hooks him up with hot hookers to hump, as the two have a natural intuitive bond despite being somewhat of opposites in terms of character. Indeed, quite unlike Dutch, Hopkins sometimes has a problem with self-control and tact, among other things, hence their natural chemistry as partners.
Needless to say, Hopkins is more than a little bit upset when his wife steals their daughter and runs off to some unknown location in San Francisco, or as she describes in a quite condescending letter that she leaves for him, “I know that you and I have not communicated for a long, long time and I’m not sure that we can again, as our values are completely different. You’re a deeply disturbed person and I cannot allow you to pass your disturbance on to Penny. I’m withholding our address in San Francisco…until I am certain you will not try to do anything rash.” Clearly no longer in love with his frigid and seemingly perennially bitchy wife and not one to waste a good opportunity, Hopkins almost immediately starts an extramarital excursion after his spouse absconds to Sod Francisco. The sort of cop that cannot help but dwell in the gutter, Hopkins gets involved with a beauteous blonde 35-year-old failed actress turned hooker named Joanie Pratt (Randi Brooks)—a character that acts as a slightly more exciting spin on the ‘whore with a heart of gold’ trope—that is connected to Niemeyer murder. As she describes to Hopkins, Joanie is responsible for setting up scam-like “floating swingers’ parties” where rich swinger pay $200 a party to fuck and buy drugs and Niemeyer was attending these parties as an investigative journalist with the intent of researching for a book on the seedy scene. Luckily for Hopkins, Joanie is so happy to help that she practically begs for the antihero to fuck her, which he quickly does from the comfort of her kitchen counter. Rather unfortunately, it is not long before the serial killer violently mutilates and murders Joanie just to fuck with Hopkins. Indeed, unbeknownst to Hopkins, the killer is monitoring him at the same time the antihero is trying to uncover the puzzle of his identity.
Needless to say, Hopkins is more than a little bit upset when his wife steals their daughter and runs off to some unknown location in San Francisco, or as she describes in a quite condescending letter that she leaves for him, “I know that you and I have not communicated for a long, long time and I’m not sure that we can again, as our values are completely different. You’re a deeply disturbed person and I cannot allow you to pass your disturbance on to Penny. I’m withholding our address in San Francisco…until I am certain you will not try to do anything rash.” Clearly no longer in love with his frigid and seemingly perennially bitchy wife and not one to waste a good opportunity, Hopkins almost immediately starts an extramarital excursion after his spouse absconds to Sod Francisco. The sort of cop that cannot help but dwell in the gutter, Hopkins gets involved with a beauteous blonde 35-year-old failed actress turned hooker named Joanie Pratt (Randi Brooks)—a character that acts as a slightly more exciting spin on the ‘whore with a heart of gold’ trope—that is connected to Niemeyer murder. As she describes to Hopkins, Joanie is responsible for setting up scam-like “floating swingers’ parties” where rich swinger pay $200 a party to fuck and buy drugs and Niemeyer was attending these parties as an investigative journalist with the intent of researching for a book on the seedy scene. Luckily for Hopkins, Joanie is so happy to help that she practically begs for the antihero to fuck her, which he quickly does from the comfort of her kitchen counter. Rather unfortunately, it is not long before the serial killer violently mutilates and murders Joanie just to fuck with Hopkins. Indeed, unbeknownst to Hopkins, the killer is monitoring him at the same time the antihero is trying to uncover the puzzle of his identity.
While far from a cucked out male feminist that loathes members of his own sex, Hopkins—an all-around tenacious alpha-male that knows how to get a woman's attention—has no problem enticing a painfully introverted male-hating feminist bookstore owner named Kathleen McCarthy (Lesley Ann Warren). Although Hopkins initially goes to see Kathleen about the book Rage in the Womb since she is the only local seller in town and she instantly acts quite combative with him and accuses him of trying to infiltrate her seemingly imaginary gynocentric movement since he is a member of law enforcement, the protagonist only needs a couple minutes to put her at ease and entice her to softly state, “I’d like to help any way I can. Really.” As for the book Hopkins is interested in, Kathleen states, “RAGE IN THE WOMB is an angry book. It’s a polemic…a broadside against many things, violence perpetuated on women in specific. I think I sold my last copy a month ago. I don’t think I’ve ever sold a copy to a man. Actually…I don’t think I…I’ve had a single man in his 30s in here…Never.”
Adopting rather solitary feminist lifestyle after being gang-raped in high school, Kathleen—a clearly quite broken woman that seems to be afraid of making real human connections, especially with men—certainly intrigues Hopkins with her tragic past, though it is not until much later in the film that the antihero realizes that the killer is actually a warped male feminist that also happens to be a secret admirer of the mousy book dealer. Indeed, as it turns out in what ultimately proves to be an all-too-convenient coincidence, Kathleen, Hopkins, and the killer all went to the same exact high school. In between sending her flowers and poems, the killer kills woman out of a warped and deluded belief that they are the sort of chicks that abandoned her after she was raped. In high school, Kathleen led a court of female poets and these girls supposedly betrayed her after she was gang-raped, which the serial killer apparently personally witnessed, hence his pathological need for revenge against both males and especially females. For 15 pathetic years, the killer has been worshiping Kathleen from afar because, as he eventually confesses in a creepy soft-spoken fashion, “She’s not like all the rest.” Unlike the killer, Hopkins wastes no time in attempting to get into Kathleen’s panties and almost does so the first night they are together, though the antihero rudely leaves her hanging while she takes a warm bath and smokes dope lest she “tense up” during coitus due to her post-rape anxiety issues. Indeed, somewhat absurdly, Hopkins absconds from Kathleen's home and thus loses his opportunity at premium grade misandrist meat curtain after he discovers a lead in the case involving a corrupt street cop and homo hustler that were part of her class.
Adopting rather solitary feminist lifestyle after being gang-raped in high school, Kathleen—a clearly quite broken woman that seems to be afraid of making real human connections, especially with men—certainly intrigues Hopkins with her tragic past, though it is not until much later in the film that the antihero realizes that the killer is actually a warped male feminist that also happens to be a secret admirer of the mousy book dealer. Indeed, as it turns out in what ultimately proves to be an all-too-convenient coincidence, Kathleen, Hopkins, and the killer all went to the same exact high school. In between sending her flowers and poems, the killer kills woman out of a warped and deluded belief that they are the sort of chicks that abandoned her after she was raped. In high school, Kathleen led a court of female poets and these girls supposedly betrayed her after she was gang-raped, which the serial killer apparently personally witnessed, hence his pathological need for revenge against both males and especially females. For 15 pathetic years, the killer has been worshiping Kathleen from afar because, as he eventually confesses in a creepy soft-spoken fashion, “She’s not like all the rest.” Unlike the killer, Hopkins wastes no time in attempting to get into Kathleen’s panties and almost does so the first night they are together, though the antihero rudely leaves her hanging while she takes a warm bath and smokes dope lest she “tense up” during coitus due to her post-rape anxiety issues. Indeed, somewhat absurdly, Hopkins absconds from Kathleen's home and thus loses his opportunity at premium grade misandrist meat curtain after he discovers a lead in the case involving a corrupt street cop and homo hustler that were part of her class.
As Hopkins eventually uncovers in a less than legal fashion, a corrupt street cop named Deputy Sheriff Delbert "Whitey" Haines (Charles Haid) and a poof prostitute named Lawrence 'Birdman' Henderson (Dennis Stewart), who were pals in high school, were two of the men responsible for gang-raping Kathleen in high school. Unfortunately, both men are killed before they can be brought to justice, as the serial killer conveniently murders Birdman and Hopkins is forced to kill Whitey after he dares to pull a shotgun on him after being confronted about his crimes. Of course, at this point, Hopkins is positive that the serial killer is someone that attended Kathleen’s high school, but the feminist book peddler refuses to cooperate with him due to not only leaving her high and dry sexually, but also because he broke into her apartment while hunting for clues relating to her high school experiences. With the support of Dutch, Kathleen eventually agrees to look at old yearbook photos of various guys she went to high school with against a cross-reference of suspects, though she refuses to acknowledge any of them as potential suspects even though a dapper chap named ‘Robert Franco’ that is listed as a “Poet Laureate” clearly catches her eyes. Seeing as Kathleen suffers the delusion that she loves her longtime secret admirer and is unwilling to believe he is a serial killer, she naturally does not want Hopkins to hound him.
Not long after she leaves the interrogation room, Kathleen is caught by Hopkins talking to Franco on a payphone as she is attempting to warn her assumed secret admirer of the crooked cop’s obsession with him. When Franco states to Hopkins, “Let her go, Hopkins. She’s not like all the rest” after the protagonist grabs the phone and then proposes a “reunion” at their ex-high school, Kathleen gets the shock of a lifetime when she finally realizes that he secret admirer is indeed the killer. When Kathleen asks Hopkins if he plans to kill Franco, the corrupt cop, who has just been suspended due to his underhanded policing techniques, replies in a suavely sarcastic fashion, “I don’t know. Maybe this time you’ll get to send him the flowers.” As for the reunion, Franco demonstrates a prowess for martial arts and killing gangsters, but he ultimately foolishly runs out of bullets for his MAC-10 machine pistol and thus is forced to suffer the grand indignity of having to ‘surrender’ to his hunter. Although Franco prepares to turn himself in by snidely remarking, “Aren’t you going to read me my rights? Cuff me? Take me into custody? What’s it to you, Hopkins? You’re a cop. You’ve got to take me in,” Hopkins is not the sort of fellow that likes to play games and reminds him that he is not a ‘by-the-books’ kind of cop by declaring, “Well there's some good news and there's some bad news. The good news is, you're right, I'm a cop and I have to take you in. The bad news is I've been suspended and I don't give a fuck!” just before unloading three shotgun rounds into the killer, thus bringing an inordinately satisfyingly fucked conclusion to one satisfying fucked film.
Not long after she leaves the interrogation room, Kathleen is caught by Hopkins talking to Franco on a payphone as she is attempting to warn her assumed secret admirer of the crooked cop’s obsession with him. When Franco states to Hopkins, “Let her go, Hopkins. She’s not like all the rest” after the protagonist grabs the phone and then proposes a “reunion” at their ex-high school, Kathleen gets the shock of a lifetime when she finally realizes that he secret admirer is indeed the killer. When Kathleen asks Hopkins if he plans to kill Franco, the corrupt cop, who has just been suspended due to his underhanded policing techniques, replies in a suavely sarcastic fashion, “I don’t know. Maybe this time you’ll get to send him the flowers.” As for the reunion, Franco demonstrates a prowess for martial arts and killing gangsters, but he ultimately foolishly runs out of bullets for his MAC-10 machine pistol and thus is forced to suffer the grand indignity of having to ‘surrender’ to his hunter. Although Franco prepares to turn himself in by snidely remarking, “Aren’t you going to read me my rights? Cuff me? Take me into custody? What’s it to you, Hopkins? You’re a cop. You’ve got to take me in,” Hopkins is not the sort of fellow that likes to play games and reminds him that he is not a ‘by-the-books’ kind of cop by declaring, “Well there's some good news and there's some bad news. The good news is, you're right, I'm a cop and I have to take you in. The bad news is I've been suspended and I don't give a fuck!” just before unloading three shotgun rounds into the killer, thus bringing an inordinately satisfyingly fucked conclusion to one satisfying fucked film.
While I am not even sure it was a totally conscious decision on auteur Harris’ part, I would argue that the greatest theme depicted is Cop is the timeless dichotomy between the extroverted alpha-male type and the introverted beta-male and how the latter is ultimately the more loathsome, repugnant, and pathetic of the two classic archetypal figures. Additionally, the film also similarly demonstrates that the masculine ‘misogynist’ ultimately loves and cares more about women than the feminist ‘nice guy’ archetype. Of course, the film is also features a less than favorable depiction of queers, as the second most loathsome character in the entire film aside from the serial killer is a closet cocksucker cop that has S&M leather-fag gear lying around his apartment. Undoubtedly, compared to Cop, director Harris’ subsequent film and celluloid swansong Boiling Point (1993)—a mostly banal effort in politically correct casting the stars Wesley Snipes as an inordinately stoic colored super cop that takes down blond white sociopaths portrayed by Dennis Hopper and a very young and super Aryan-looking Viggo Mortensen—seems like a sad and pathetic artistic compromise meant to appeal the insipid cultural marxist socio-political agenda of Hollywood (notably, Harris has revealed in various interviews that the studio took the film away from him and butchered it). In fact, I do not think it would be a stretch to conclude that Harris directed Boiling Point simply due to its potential mainstream appeal because, as he admitted in a 2017 interview at MUBI in regard to his early success with Kubrick, “I think it ruined me. I was determined to produce projects of social importance. That’s why you see large gaps in my filmography. There’s a decade between SOME CALL IT LOVING and FAST-WALKING. I could have had a larger body of work, but I didn’t listen to any of the agents who sent mainstream projects my way or offered to put attractive deals together with their hot clients.” Of course, coincidentally, there is just as larger gaps in between films when it comes to Harris’ buddy Kubrick’s career.
Undoubtedly, if there is any underlying philosophy behind Cop, it is probably best summed up by German literary maestro Ernst Jünger words, “Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment.” Indeed, the film's protagonist has stoically accepted the world is an ever-degenerating shithole full of societal decay and misery yet he manages to squeeze in a couple ecstatic fuck sessions with rather ravishing bimbos in between kicking ass and taking names. In fact, I would argue that the titular antihero portrayed by James Woods is a sort of primitive blue collar equivalent to Jünger figure of the ‘Anarch,’ which is a sort of metaphysical ideal figure of a sovereign individual in the Teutonic ‘conservative’ sense. As Jünger argued in his novel Eumeswil (1977), “The partisan wants to change the law, the criminal break it; the anarch wants neither. He is not for or against the law. While not acknowledging the law, he does try to recognize it like the laws of nature, and he adjusts accordingly,” which is probably a good way to describe the antihero's own preternatural thinking. Clearly, the film’s protagonist has little concern for the law, which he constantly breaks to ironically bust lawbreakers, but instead completing his job and sticking to his own distinct moral code, thus he would probably understand Jünger’s words, “I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it,” as he would probably be gunning down criminals 24/7 if he did not have some superficial legal guideline that he liberally followed. Likewise, “I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in,” attests to the character's need for renegade justice in the face of injustice. Additionally, Woods’ character certainly lives by the words, “The anarch wages his own wars, even when marching in rank and file.”
While his wife and various other characters accuse him of being ‘sick’ due to his rather culturally pessimistic Weltanschauung, the titular antihero of Cop is nothing if not someone that has cultivated an appropriate attitude to a sick and savage urban jungle, or as the late great Colombian ‘reactionary’ writer Nicolás Gómez Dávila once profoundly argued, “Adaptation to the modern world requires sclerosis of sensibility and degradation of character.” After all, one would have to be exceptionally sick and/or emotionally catatonic to be unresponsive to a world that is increasingly morally necrotic, racially and culturally apocalyptic, increasingly sub-literate, and mostly aesthetically bankrupt. While the film’s protagonist sees little good in society, he would not be such an effective cop were it not for his low expectations for humanity in general because, as Dávila rather rightly argued, “Optimism is never faith in progress, but hope for a miracle.”
The only real complaint I have about Cop is that it is not quite as dark and subversive as James Ellroy’s source novel Blood on the Moon (1984), which is somewhat curious when one considers that Tom Hanks of all people confessed in an October 13,2017 New York Times interview that he would be interested in playing the novel’s lead Lloyd Hopkins on the stage or screen. For example, the protagonist is more overtly degenerate in the novel, which was apparently initially rejected by 17 different publishers, as demonstrated by the following hilarious multicultural blowjob excerpt, “He found a Negro prostitute at the corner of Western and Adams who was willing to do the deed for ten dollars, and they drove to a side street and parked. Lloyd screamed when he came, frightening the hooker, who bolted out of the car before she could collect her money.” As much as I am disgusted at the thought of fellatio involving an assumedly STD-ridden street negress, this brief excerpt reveals the hardcore essence of the novel which, for obvious reasons, Harris was not fully able to cinematically disseminate. Not surprisingly, Harris was largely enticed to adapt the novel because of its less than politically correct tone, or as he explained in an interview with Nick Pinkerton at Film Comment, “I love the character of the cop who pushes the envelope, that could get suspended any time, works on his own, is so obsessed with successfully getting the criminal […] And I liked the scenes. Some books you read and you don’t see anything you feel you can dramatize effectively. This book had real scenes—like the moment where the cop tells a crime scene bedtime story to his kid. We got a really young kid, so that it would seem outrageous for her to be hearing these stories about breaking and entering and murder. That’s what attracted me to the material, the potential of scenes, the arguments with the wife, Lesley’s character calling him a ‘police person.’ I wanted to make fun of all of that Women’s Lib shit that was so hot at the time.” As for what Ellroy thought of the film, he apparently was not initially happy with it but as Harris explained in the same interview, “We made the picture for very little. We got everyone to cooperate, to work for reasonable salaries. It was Ellroy’s first film, and I don’t think he knew how to handle it when he first saw it. He said he didn’t care for the film when he first saw it. But later he said everybody told him that the picture was terrific, and he went back and reevaluated it and said he liked it now, in fact I think he took the film on a tour to England, through several cities, and he screened the film as an example of a good adaptation. As it turned out, we had a good relationship, and I ended up acquiring THE BLACK DAHLIA from him as well.”
As far as I am concerned, Harris is a seemingly mostly unartistic yet highly intuitive and street smart individual that has managed to direct three great underrated films that almost manage to elevate pulp to the level of poetry. If Harris learned anything from his buddy Kubrick, it was finding the right source material to adapt. Of course, Harris' choice of material also demonstrates he was more subversive and morally dubious than Kubrick, which is arguably his greatest strength as a filmmaker. Indeed, whereas Kubrick seemed coldly disgusted and pessimistic about humanity (notably, the director-producer team once planned to adopt the lost Jim Thompson novella Lunatic at Large), Harris seems to have wallowed in the grit, grime, and slime of humanity as demonstrated by the mirthfully mad essences of Fast-Walking and Cop. In fact, only in Some Call It Loving, which is undoubtedly both the director's most personal and perverse film, does Harris reveal a certain foreboding dejection and melancholy. A sort of never fully developed master of brutally honest cinematic art for proles, Harris' rather simple and unpretentious films arguably demonstrate that Dávila was right when he wrote, “Poetry has died, asphyxiated by metaphors.”
As to the value of so-called ‘corrupt cops,’ German-American sage H.L. Mencken arguably said it best when he wrote in 1931, “The curse of the cops, speaking professionally, is the sensitiveness of the district attorney's office to political and other pressure. Every day they see perfectly good cases fall to pieces in the courtroom. As a result of their most arduous labors, sometimes at the risk of their lives, go for naught, and they are naturally upset and full of woe. Not infrequently they beat up a prisoner because they fear that he will be able to escape any other punishment. They know that he is guilty, but they also know that he has a sharp lawyer, so they fan him while they have him. This fanning — or massaging, as they call it — is greatly dreaded by criminals.” Aside from misguided liberal morons and certain types of sociopaths, serial killers, and serial killer fetishists, I think most people would agree with the titular antihero's final actions at the quite literally explosive conclusion of Harris' film. In a morally inverted world with an alien-owned mainstream media that incessantly transforms negro thugs into Christlike martyrs and constantly demonizes police officers as sort of pathologically genocidal neo-Gestapo demons, Cop is almost as refreshing as waking up to a sloppy wet blowjob, which is certainly something that Lloyd Hopkins could appreciate.
The only real complaint I have about Cop is that it is not quite as dark and subversive as James Ellroy’s source novel Blood on the Moon (1984), which is somewhat curious when one considers that Tom Hanks of all people confessed in an October 13,2017 New York Times interview that he would be interested in playing the novel’s lead Lloyd Hopkins on the stage or screen. For example, the protagonist is more overtly degenerate in the novel, which was apparently initially rejected by 17 different publishers, as demonstrated by the following hilarious multicultural blowjob excerpt, “He found a Negro prostitute at the corner of Western and Adams who was willing to do the deed for ten dollars, and they drove to a side street and parked. Lloyd screamed when he came, frightening the hooker, who bolted out of the car before she could collect her money.” As much as I am disgusted at the thought of fellatio involving an assumedly STD-ridden street negress, this brief excerpt reveals the hardcore essence of the novel which, for obvious reasons, Harris was not fully able to cinematically disseminate. Not surprisingly, Harris was largely enticed to adapt the novel because of its less than politically correct tone, or as he explained in an interview with Nick Pinkerton at Film Comment, “I love the character of the cop who pushes the envelope, that could get suspended any time, works on his own, is so obsessed with successfully getting the criminal […] And I liked the scenes. Some books you read and you don’t see anything you feel you can dramatize effectively. This book had real scenes—like the moment where the cop tells a crime scene bedtime story to his kid. We got a really young kid, so that it would seem outrageous for her to be hearing these stories about breaking and entering and murder. That’s what attracted me to the material, the potential of scenes, the arguments with the wife, Lesley’s character calling him a ‘police person.’ I wanted to make fun of all of that Women’s Lib shit that was so hot at the time.” As for what Ellroy thought of the film, he apparently was not initially happy with it but as Harris explained in the same interview, “We made the picture for very little. We got everyone to cooperate, to work for reasonable salaries. It was Ellroy’s first film, and I don’t think he knew how to handle it when he first saw it. He said he didn’t care for the film when he first saw it. But later he said everybody told him that the picture was terrific, and he went back and reevaluated it and said he liked it now, in fact I think he took the film on a tour to England, through several cities, and he screened the film as an example of a good adaptation. As it turned out, we had a good relationship, and I ended up acquiring THE BLACK DAHLIA from him as well.”
As far as I am concerned, Harris is a seemingly mostly unartistic yet highly intuitive and street smart individual that has managed to direct three great underrated films that almost manage to elevate pulp to the level of poetry. If Harris learned anything from his buddy Kubrick, it was finding the right source material to adapt. Of course, Harris' choice of material also demonstrates he was more subversive and morally dubious than Kubrick, which is arguably his greatest strength as a filmmaker. Indeed, whereas Kubrick seemed coldly disgusted and pessimistic about humanity (notably, the director-producer team once planned to adopt the lost Jim Thompson novella Lunatic at Large), Harris seems to have wallowed in the grit, grime, and slime of humanity as demonstrated by the mirthfully mad essences of Fast-Walking and Cop. In fact, only in Some Call It Loving, which is undoubtedly both the director's most personal and perverse film, does Harris reveal a certain foreboding dejection and melancholy. A sort of never fully developed master of brutally honest cinematic art for proles, Harris' rather simple and unpretentious films arguably demonstrate that Dávila was right when he wrote, “Poetry has died, asphyxiated by metaphors.”
As to the value of so-called ‘corrupt cops,’ German-American sage H.L. Mencken arguably said it best when he wrote in 1931, “The curse of the cops, speaking professionally, is the sensitiveness of the district attorney's office to political and other pressure. Every day they see perfectly good cases fall to pieces in the courtroom. As a result of their most arduous labors, sometimes at the risk of their lives, go for naught, and they are naturally upset and full of woe. Not infrequently they beat up a prisoner because they fear that he will be able to escape any other punishment. They know that he is guilty, but they also know that he has a sharp lawyer, so they fan him while they have him. This fanning — or massaging, as they call it — is greatly dreaded by criminals.” Aside from misguided liberal morons and certain types of sociopaths, serial killers, and serial killer fetishists, I think most people would agree with the titular antihero's final actions at the quite literally explosive conclusion of Harris' film. In a morally inverted world with an alien-owned mainstream media that incessantly transforms negro thugs into Christlike martyrs and constantly demonizes police officers as sort of pathologically genocidal neo-Gestapo demons, Cop is almost as refreshing as waking up to a sloppy wet blowjob, which is certainly something that Lloyd Hopkins could appreciate.
-Ty E
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