2012, Movies

Freelancers (2012, Jessy Terreo)

This may be the worst cop movie ever made.

Well, maybe not, as I can conceive of a no-budget cop movie being worse.

But this has to be the worst cop movie that has ever had a budget, and that has ever featured either of Robert DeNiro or Forest Whitaker. I have never seen so many cop movie cliches together in one place before, but moreover I have never seen so many cop movie cliches handled so poorly, surrounding such an unlikable, incomprehensible group of characters spouting lines that feel like they have all been taking from the numerous mediocre cop movies I have seen in my life.

Sure, the production values are normal for such a cast, but everything else is terrible.

  • The characters are not relatable but worse do not make any sense; the way they behave, the situations they find themselves in, etc; nothing makes an iota of sense.
  • The pacing is brutal: though the film obviously takes place over time, it feels like it takes place over a week or two, tops.
  • There is literally no realism: clearly DeNiro’s character has been caught doing numerous illegal things and yet is somehow still a cop. (Oh yeah, and the protagonist and his chums had criminal pasts before they were cops. That’s believable.)
  • And how’s this for realism: a police officer, with his badge out, gets into an argument in a club while doing coke, and shoots somebody using his service weapon, and that is the last we here of it. He’s fine. Totally fine. No consequences. (Well, DeNiro tells 50 that it was stupid.) No importance to the plot either. Just a random “Hey let’s insert this totally nonsensical and pointless scene into this movie because it’ll look cool.”

That’s this whole movie: it’s all about trying to create some kind of feel that these guys have seen in other cop movies only nobody here had the talent to come close.

And they must have spent most of their budget on DeNiro and Whitaker.I can’t imagine how those guys could have taken anything short of millions to be in this heaping pile of shit.

1/10

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