Hello Friends,
A few weeks ago, I re-watched Rent-A-Cop. It was better than I remembered, so I decided to review it.
Warning, this review contains extensive spoilers of the movie, as well as of "Reservoir Dogs" towards the end.
Note: No AI was used in writing this text.
Rent-a-cop is a cop thriller / crime movie from the late 80s. Reviews were rather lukewarm. Critics lamented the movie would try to be too much of everything, and thus would be "neither here nor there". And, indeed, it feels like an accumulation of the 70s and 80s favorite tropes. Cop movie, buddy movie, fish-out-of-water, the odd couple...
The coupling is maybe not so square at all. Burt plays an aging, hardened, streetwise, tough talking cop who got kicked out of his job, while Liza is an aging, hardened, streetwise, shit-talking sex worker on the run.
Both actors were at a bit of a career slump and, indeed, aging at this point, so I could imagine there is something biographical about the way they played these roles.
Personally, I feel the movie sits a bit "in between time". It is a 70s / 80s movie through and through *yet* there are also some modern elements.
For example, There are (very brief) references to fetish sex and LGBTQIA+ themes that felt "ahead of time" for a traditional cop flick of the 80s (at least this side of Miami Vice).
The world of computers has already intruded the world of law and crime; both gangsters, cops, drug lords, and madams are very interested in desktop computers, diskettes, and database software.
And then there is Dancer, the main villain. I think he's one of the best villains in any crime movie ever.
Homicidal, maniac, complete psycho. Nihilist, hellbent, just in it for kicks and chaos. Nearly shoots himself in the head on a dare.
Apart from working as a killer, he is a professional dancer and loves to pick up people at night clubs (and a few scenes make you wonder how straight he is about this...)
Most people will remember the movie for one scene, right at the beginning.
There is an extensive build-up to the scene, we see hotel rooms, gangsters preparing a drug deal, cops gathering to bust this specific drug deal, we learn that there are undercover agents at work too, everything feels tense, uncertain...
So the deal takes place, and the operation takes place, too, and just in this moment, dancer bursts in through the door, tosses a "flashbang", blinds everyone, even the police snipers, kills everyone in the chaos, all of this in a matter of mere seconds.
It leaves quite the impression.
We later learn that the drug deal was overseen by a local kingpin; and word reached his organization that something might run afoul, and there might be a traitor involved in the deal. So the kingpin calls up dancer and orders a hit on *everyone* involved - the cops, the undercover agents and *all of his own, loyal men*. A wholesale massacre - just to be sure about everything.
I recently re-watched Reservoir Dogs, which also is a crime movie, but from the 90s, from the next generation.
Of course, "dogs" is the better movie, it's more modern, it's genius, it's groundbreaking. It was praised for its off-level screening of violence. It paints quite a bleak and nihilist world, that's for sure.
The topic is a failed crime operation too, and there is a lot of blood shed in the result. There is a traitor involved as well, and there is a lot of lamenting, pondering, panic, just to be certain who the traitor is, and not to kill the "wrong" guy by making an unwise decision.
But come to think of it... the world depicted in "rent-a-cop" is even one inch more bleak, cynical, and brutal, than in Tarantino's.
There is no "honor amongst thieves", no care - the fate of friends and foes is decided on a whim, without concern, and then everyone is gone.
Now to get away from Tarantino.
"Rent-a-cop" indeed feels like a lukewarm affair, an old-fashioned cop and buddy movie; but it has a few good moments, and these good moments actually feel brilliant and, in a sense, very modern.
It left me with the impression that maybe the time was not right for this content yet, and it would have fared better if it had been done in the 90s. And I wonder how some of the more interesting content would have worked out if these pieces had been getting more extensive treatment.
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