Starring: Frank Grillo, Gerard Butler, Alexis Louder, Toby Huss, and Chad L. Coleman.

Directed By Joe Carnahan

Where I Watched It: Peacock

English Audio Description Available?: Unknown.

The plot: A con artist (Grillo) on the run tries to hide by getting himself locked up, but pretty soon, those who wish him dead still find their way to the police station.

What Works: What a great out of nowhere movie. This was recommended to me by someone whose opinion I usually agree with, and this was a delightful action crime caper full of vibrant characters, great dialogue, and inventive plot development. They just don’t make movies like this anymore, and especially with Gerard Butler, who if we are being honest, keeps being shoved into generic action movies.

This is not generic. The characters are well fleshed out, the plot keeps you guessing, and the direction from Joe Carnahan (instead of someone cutting their teeth) pays off. This is an excellent movie. IMDB score be damned.

I didn’t even have audio description, and aside from not knowing who was shot at certain points and having to piece it together later, I followed this movie perfectly because the dialogue is so on point. A huge welcome to Alexis Louder, who was not on my radar before this, but she’s fantastic and needs to be cast in everything. If you have Peacock, please watch Cop Shop.

What Doesn’t Work: I suppose I have one little gripe, but it is super spoilery, so I can’t really go into it. There is one element of the film, where the script kind of makes characters not as smart as they should be given the jobs they have, that didn’t quite work for me. I got that they were shooting for humor there, but since the film is pretty straight forward, playing a character like that with such misguided intentions did make me not like the joke the writer thought was better than actually making that scene make sense.

And that’s about as vague as I can be without ruining it. Though if you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about.

Don’t dumb down characters who clearly have to be of a certain IQ just for a laugh. Not unless the movie itself is that kind of film, which this is not.

The Blind Perspective: Peacock aggressively refuses to make an app accessible to me on any device that I use to watch TV, and since I subscribe to all the major services, it’s a Peacock problem, not a “me” problem. I chose to watch this without audio description and I loved it. It may have audio description, and you might have an app that actually functions with a screen reader. Good for you. I still believe Peacock needs to program their app better.

Final Thoughts: So glad I watched this movie. One of my favorites now from 2021. Maybe top 10. Maybe. We shall see.If not, it will come very close.

Final Grade: A-