First Take: Copshop - does this belong in 1971 or 2021?

SYNOPSIS: On the run from a lethal assassin, a wily con artist devises a scheme to hide out inside a small-town police station-but when the hitman turns up at the precinct, an unsuspecting rookie cop finds herself caught in the crosshairs.

It can only be that time of year, when the distributors are too scared to release anything too big knowing that it’ll get buried by Shang-Chi, and in a little over two weeks, arguably the film that the industry have been pinning the recovery on. But for STX Entertainment, who historically have had a good track record with this mid-September release slot, they felt it was the right time to drop this film. While it has its moments, it does suffer from a slight identity crisis.

It isn’t the fault of director Joe Carnahan, who turns in a 1 hour 47 minute film that is paced in a semi-decent way, but more because of the script from Carnahan and Joe McLeod. It feels like a film that should’ve been set in the 70s, but had to be re-set due to some external factors (especially as they shot the film during the height of the Covid pandemic last year)- we’ve also seen this kind of plot way too many times now - it would’ve worked better as a streaming film rather than a full blown cinema release, and the early box office stats indicate this. It is shot well by Juan Miguel Azpiroz though, and the score from Clinton Shorter comes in at just the right places.

Performance wise, there are only three major roles of note- Gerard Butler, in a rare turn of form, holds the film together as a hitman who has neither a wife, or a bodyguard, we have Frank Grillo as a con artist, who again, makes this film come alive, but the real revelation is Alexis Shorter as the rookie cop in charge of keeping both of them from killing each other. This film has some serious untapped potential, and again, because Bond is looming, it feels like STX put this out to be the sacrificial lamb just so cinemas could survive until that big opening night on September 30th.

THE VERDICT

Copshop is a perfectly serviceable action film, with some good points, and some bad points- as counterprogramming to Bond and Shang-Chi, it’s going to have some success, but the plot could cause problems with some more casual cinemagoers.

RATING: 3/5