Cop

James Woods has had some great closing lines in his movies.  Remember VIDEODROME?  In 1988's COP he gets another one.  One so succinct and perfect that there really is no other way to end this picture.  Its few words paint a character sketch of a cop who is way past burn out and perhaps as apathetic and dangerous as the vermin he hunts.  But Woods takes this cliche and fleshes out a characterization that is so vivid and singular that I really can't imagine this story with anyone else.  His Los Angeles cop Lloyd Hopkins is somewhat like Dirty Harry, someone with a severely jaded yet inarguably realistic view of urban life.  Someone always at odds with his superiors, the ones who drag their feet on investigations and think more about public image than justice.

Hopkins stumbles upon a gruesome murder early in the movie and before long conjectures that it is a continuation of a chain of killings dating back fifteen years.  The Department doesn't want a serial killer case bringing negative press.  The titular cop becomes obsessed, likely as he always is about his work, though clearly it is killing him.  He's a "shoot first" type of guy, and not above having kitchen counter sex with those he questions.   It is no surprise that his wife eventually flees with their young daughter, the one Lloyd tells rather unconventional bedtime stories.

Director James B. Harris' screenplay is an adaptation of James Ellroy's Blood on the Moon, and doesn't exactly turn the cop/detective genre inside out.  But Woods' knockout performance certainly does.  So naturally does he inhabit this scuz of a lawman, a loathsome SOB who very willingly ignores the law unless it is related to the apprehension of his quarry.  But Hopkins isn't lazily painted as some garden variety corruptible who snorts the cocaine he seizes or the blood money he happens upon.  He's a complex dude who does occasionally show some emotion, though it may all be just to feed his obsession. We feel badly for his long suffering bud on the force, Dutch (Charles Durning, who's wonderful), always called upon to clean up a mess.  Also for the owner of a feminist bookstore named Kathleen (Lesley Anne Warren, doing her best with an odd character) who suffers Hopkins' unpredictable behavior.

COP is an engrossing tale that oozes with sleaze, and it's never short of fascinating.  L.A. is evoked with a wide eye by Harris, who had worked with Woods before and spent his early career collaborating with Stanley Kubrick.  But it's all about the socko Woods performance, leading up to that final line of dialogue.  Not easily forgotten.