I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Travis and Harrison are young boys who find an abandoned cop car, and they decide on a joy ride. Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon) dumps two dead bodies and is desperate to get back the car. He lies to dispatch (Kyra Sedgwick) and does his utmost to hide that fact while searching for the car. Bev (Camryn Manheim) spots the kids driving the car. The boys discover a bloody man (Shea Whigham) tied up in the truck.This is an intriguing indie. I do like the fact that the boys couldn't figure out how to fire a gun. It builds up to a nice thriller. Then the movie ends. It feels like the production ran out of money. The way it ends needs one final car chase. It could have left the ending without the final chase and leaving the dead bodies dead. Either way would be superior. Otherwise, director Jon Watts does a solid job.

Two kids (James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford), goofing off in rural Colorado, stumble upon an abandoned cop car, deciding to take it for a spin! After this, the film takes us back to why the car was left alone and empty: a crooked sheriff (Kevin Bacon), who had confiscated some dope from two hoods (one was killed and buried by the cop while the other is left face-beaten and plastic-tied but alive), had to leave it for a moment. When the sheriff returns, he sees that the car is gone and must be found, later realizing two kids had taken it! So he's off to find the kids, with various obstacles making his life difficult. He uses a piece of rope to pull open a door lock, stealing a car in a neighborhood trailer park, narrowly ducking identification from both a local and a motorcycle officer. The hood in the trunk (Shea Whigham) is able to manipulate the kids into helping him loose, taking them hostage through the use of a shotgun. Whigham plans to shoot Bacon once he is told across a radio of their whereabouts by the boys on where to find the car. Meanwhile, a motorist (Camryn Manheim) noticed the boys driving wildly down the road, just missing her. She returns to find them, but it turns out to be quite the mistake as she encounters the sheriff, the cop car with the boys trapped in the back seat, and the possible bullet of a machine gun (Whigham, hidden behind a well placed windmill).At a lean 90 minutes, with a game Bacon who just oozes sleaze and corruption, there's a gulp-in-the-throat suspense due to the boys' cluelessness when behind the wheel of a car or holding loaded guns. Add Whigham, with a face just a bloody, battered mess, telling the kids that if they inform Bacon of letting him out of the trunk he'd kill their parents and pets(!), and there's lots of menace directed possibly at the kids' welfare. Manheim is handed a minor part as the motorist, with little much in the way of screen time to give the character any definition. She's every bit the wrong-place-wrong-time type of character these kinds of movies always offer us. Bacon avoiding multiple problems that might halt his progress towards getting to the kids is part of the film's tension: will he or won't he find them, and what then? Whigham is an added wrinkle that further complicates matters. The rural setting is all "Badlands" in its open fields and depiction of how boredom and the absence of anything positive to occupy time can lend itself to a dark road of violence and danger. Compelling in how it alternates between what Bacon is up and the kids: the knowledge that the cop and kids will eventually meet is certainly frightening. Whigham is that monkey wrench that just makes things so much worse. A cow, of all things, complicates Bacon more than Whigham ultimately does! A ricocheted bullet could lead to tragedy as the kids use a cop gun to burst a window. That is Mrs. Bacon's (Kyra Sedgwick) voice across the radio as the dispatcher his cop continues to contact so that he can move the police off of the dial he needs to contact the boys in peace.

Ill be as honest as i can be with this movie, i particularly liked it still not great in my opinion, it's an 80-minute movie, the distance proves too great for the thin plotting to cover.Thats my main problem how little its explained of the premise, specially with the Kevin Bacon character, theirs a few plot holes with him, if you pay attention to his parts you will notice some inconsistence regarding who he is. The two boys (James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford) are cussing their way through a Colorado town after running away from home( its never explain why).They find a cop car in the middle of no where and decided the best thing to do is steal it.The problem in this movie is the shapelessness of the story.There's minimal character development others character we don't know anything about, and focuses more in the amount of tension it can deliver with the stillness of the scenes...and there's plenty of that in this movie to a point it feels more like padding time.There are fine performances in this film specially from James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford, but plot and pacing in this movie is not enough to make it more gripping towards the audience.

Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) are out walking when they notice a seemingly abandoned patrol car. With no police officer in sight and after some deliberation (and after finding the keys for the vehicle inside the car) the 2 boys decide to take the patrol car for a little spin. However, the kids finds themselves in over the heads when they find themselves being pursued by an unhinged Sheriff (Kevin Bacon) who is determined to get the car back for reasons beyond merely a sense of duty.Cop Car is purportedly a 'cat and mouse' film and I think that anyone who refers to it as being a 'cat and mouse' film should be sued under the trade descriptions act. The granddaddy of 'cat and mouse' road films is arguably Duel, but for this film to even be put in the same category of Duel is just beyond a joke....The first few minutes of the film consist of the two kids coming out with as many swear words as possible. I'm not quite sure what the point of this was, but it seemed rather silly and made me take a dislike to the two kids more or less straight away. The kids then steal a police car (after some deliberation) and go cruising about in it. Some of the scenes where the kids are happily cruising round in the patrol car are actually pretty funny; despite the severity of their actions there is always an underlying innocence with them as characters - they didn't take the car with the intention of killing anyone or in causing any harm, but they merely wanted to have some fun and saw a golden opportunity to do this. Therefore I can't really offer much criticism on this aspect of the story, but there are other problems elsewhere...Narratively the film is rather weak and yes we do learn that Kevin Bacon's character is corrupt and dodgy, but don't really learn why and what has caused him to be this way? Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but given the fact that the film spends so much time focusing on his corruption (such as him burying a body at the start) and then having to face-off with the brother of the guy he buried later in the film you'd have thought that the writers would have offered some insight into this aspect of the story (considering how important it seemed). All this seemed a waste of screen time in my opinion.Cop Car is billed as a 'cat and mouse' film and as I mentioned earlier this is not my idea of a 'cat and mouse' film. The first half of the film shows some mildly amusing moments with two kids trying to figure out how to drive a car and the other part of the film sees Kevin Bacon aimlessly running here, there and everywhere in an attempt to track down his patrol car. It's around the 40 minute mark before the Sheriff gets in touch with the kids and by that point the damage had already been done as far as I was concerned. Even when The Sheriff catches up with the kids the whole scenario relies on ridiculous contrivances in order to reach its resolution and the film never has one genuine moment of terror or suspense.If you want to watch some good cat and mouse road films then I'd suggest Joy Ride, Duel or the low budget Brit film Hush which are all infinitely better than Cop Car which is, at best, a mediocre cat and mouse film.