Do you remember cop-buddy movies? You know the ones the ones
I mean – The Lethal Weapon series. 48 Hours. Bad Boys. Red
Heat with Awwnold and Jim Belushi. The Hardway with Michael J. Fox and
James Woods … movies that bounced between gritty crime drama and action comedy.
Well that creature has mutated into War On Everyone, director John Michael McDonagh’s well-crafted love
letter to the felon in us all, a seriously off-kilter black comedy
about police corruption and a whole lot more. Imagine if you will, a
cop-buddy movie where the two cops … don’t like cops.
Michael Peña as Bob and
Alexander Skarsgård as Terry are two partnered, amazingly
irresponsible Albuquerque police detectives, basically shake-down artists who
just happen to be cops and living quite well as a result of everything they
help themselves to, thank you very much. They are so sociopathically
nuts, they must live in a world more nuts than they are in order to have their
antics seem like business as usual. Business as usual for these two
meaing to rob the crooks blind. I’ll take the wide screen TV says
Bob. In his universe Thou shall not steal is one of The Ten Suggestions. Well,
it’s not all like that. Bob and Terry will kick-back some of the cash to a
crook if he’s willing to snitch. And even if instead, they kick you in
the groin to let you know who’s in charge, they’ll still drink with you.
They can’t be all that bad, and I guess that’s the point.
They’re still policing, and even though their style can get a police department
taken over by The US Department of Justice, they’re cops, poking around,
running down leads, and in this particular case they’ve unwittingly
stumbled upon a scheme to rob a racetrack masterminded by a British Lord named
Mangan, played with diabolical suavity by Theo
James.
Of all the people who could be after this super-criminal, it’s
Bob, a hilariously profane, un PC off the wall Hispanic flatfoot, ready to show
everybody the error of their ways. He’s such a knucklehead he treats
everybody like a perp including his kids and his wife loves him for it.
Alexander Skarsgård plays Terry as if …
Mike Hammer had his brain transplanted into Dirty Harry’s body
then escaped from Lady Frankenstein’s laboratory only to be sexually assaulted
by The Wolfman, which would explain Terry’s night sweats. While the big
guy might not necessarily enjoy knocking people out cold, he sure is good at
it.
Peña’s performance mostly centers around him
being the biggest bullshiter on nine planets, as well as a dad in some demented
sit-com. But Skarsgård really surprises in a great physical performance
that keeps him in almost constant motion. Whether he’s looking for a
missing teenager who may have been sexually assaulted by Mangan or dancing with
his new girlfriend Jackie, played by Tessa Thompson, he really
makes his half of the movie his … and he is great fun to watch.
Special mention goes to Caleb Landry Jones, very
effective as Mangan’s jittery, pretty-boy associate, whose beating at the hands
of Terry gives the story a grotesque edge. And Paul Reiser achieves
perfect pitch in his exasperation as Lt. Stanton, the boss of these two
scaliwag clowns.
So you’re telling me it takes two
off-the-reservation cops to go after a well-connected, malignant British
aristocrat decamped on our side of the pond? Learn something new
everyday. This was one of those rare movies I had to watch two nights in
a row just to be sure it played fair with all its bits, and I must say it
does. But there was still something about it that was oddly out of place,
yet vaguely familiar, and after I read a review mentioning that director
McDonagh is from Ireland, I said to myself, okay. I get it. I
happen to be a big fan of British crime drama and War on Everyone’s cynical
view of law enforcement would fit right in with those stories. It’s even
got a bit of the old Irish vs British thing going.
I mentioned to friends I was doing a video-review
of War On Everyone and people would say … ‘Never heard of it’. It’s been
out for over a year. You’d think it would’ve found some kind of an
audience. However, it didn’t do much at the box office and maybe the
title didn’t let everybody in on the joke. Or just maybe the film, with
its subplot involving a child pornography ring and its tip of the hat to
Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, hinting at those dark
doings, was too much of a close shave for some movie distributors. I
dunno. The movie might be ahead of its time. Be that as it may, War
On Everyone lands somewhere between a fractured fairytale and an escape
fantasy, and in its twisted world we find- women in burkas playing tennis; Bob
proving to be the greatest detective since Sherlock Holmes; and Terry wondering
aloud if a thug with a badge can have Buddha nature. Think of Bob and
Terry as two larcenous leprechauns out on a tear. Seen that way … it all
makes perfect sense.
This movie is rated R for violence, nudity, crude language, sexual situations, drug use, mopery, racketeering, impropriety, unconstitutionality, having an open beer in the car, littering, and disturbing content like telling Paul Riser he was never your friend in the first place.
Step
away from the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, sir. It’s ours.
