Officer Downe is not the movie that will bring society down, but it is emblematic of everything that is wrong with society. It is about a rookie cop on the LAPD who gets recruited into an experimental program to have the back of the titular character, a man who gets resurrected from the dead and literally lives to serve, but when a notorious criminal organization decides to finally take out the reanimated officer of the law, will they succeed or will the undead lawman finally take them out?
Officer Downe is a great idea. I loved it when it was originally called RoboCop. Jokes aside, this movie’s premise is less futuristic, sci fi and more occultic, which is actually a terrific idea for a movie. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the LAPD’s tarnished history knows that they cannot be lauded as selfless heroes like the neighborhood cop theoretically could. So promulgating the perverse idea that the LAPD, which are supposed to be the good guys that we are rooting for, have some sinister vaguely Satanic pact to achieve their goals, is rife with potential. Instead of a badge, they wear pentagrams. It actually is not that farfetched because anyone familiar with German history during World War II (see how I am doing my best not to invoke Godwin’s law), knows that truth is stranger than fiction. On the other side, some criminals use the trappings of Christianity in a perverse, blasphemous way that could play off the ambiguous nature of both sides of the law as an incisive commentary of society’s thorny debate about the transformation of law enforcement in society from being a member to an occupying force with no rules of conduct. Other criminals wear animal masks. Dr. Moreau’s experiments took the wrong road and went for a corporate boardroom aesthetic.
No, Officer Downe just thinks using pentagrams are cool and wants nuns wearing tons of makeup and huge cleavage because sexy nuns are hot and transgressive (I guess). Maybe someone was shopping at a high-level pop-up Halloween shop and thought that the costumes alone would make a great movie, but could not be bothered to connect the dots. The best horror or sci fi movies attempt to make some reference to real life and tap into some unspoken socioeconomic, psycho, sexual latent common human thought that encapsulates the time period it was made in. The LAPD is rife for material. I am not suggesting something outrageous or hard. James Cameron did this exact same thing with Terminator 2: Judgment Day!
This comic book movie makes Sin City seem like a Russian novel. Say what you will about Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s pulpy proclivities, they tell a solid story while feeding their fantasies. Even at their most prurient and self-indulgent, there is a point regardless of whether you like it or not, and the payoff is usually worth the journey. Officer Downe is all joke, no punchline. Initially I was making note of all the features then I gave up and slunk into despair and disgust over the wasted imagery. Beavis and Butthead made a movie in a vacuum, y’all, and I threw eighty-eight minutes of my precious life down the drain during a global pandemic.
As if it was not enough of a disappointment that Officer Downe failed to take its rich visual material to the next level, the story completely punks out by making the rookie cop a bland, relatable protagonist for viewers to project a personality on, not the titular character. Even though the movie also tries to make him a diet Taxi Driver, morally vacant candidate while completely failing to rise to that challenge, he just randomly cares and becomes invested in the titular character while not having much meaningful interaction with him. Why would I want to follow this guy when he is not innately interesting? We want the weird!
If I had a vote and was not permitted to choose Officer Downe as the protagonist, I would choose to follow either the police chief or the head of the experiment. Luna Lauren Velez and Sam Witwer play the respective aforementioned characters. I cannot really explain why I like Velez, and I do not recall how I know her, but her face is familiar. I felt as if she was acting against type and definitely was going for a certain vibe that I expected from the film, but did not get while watching it. In one exchange with the rookie, someone addresses her as m’aam, and she replies, “Cut that shit!” It worked for me. I have always claimed that working in certain professions can potentially be akin to being in power drag by adopting the costume and culture of cis men. It disabuses the viewer of the instinctual presumption that a woman of color will belong to an institution with certain masculine gender norms as a default and not cosign them. Like all things in this film, it ultimately goes nowhere, but it was a nice note.
I am a Witwer fan. My favorite Witwer role was as Doomsday in Smallville, but I love him in everything although I am a tad concerned about how pale he is after seeing him play a vampire in the US version of Being Human. I cannot un-see it now. He is the color of paper. His hair is really black, and his lips are really red. Just don’t eat any apples. His role as the head of the scientific program is what hooked me so I innately think that the character is interesting regardless of which actor plays him, but Witwer was the icing on the proverbial cake. I want to learn more about what makes Officer Downe tick, and it felt like a missed opportunity not to see that character interact more with the undead cop. I wish all his scenes got super-sized.
Officer Downe actually does not interact with many people in a meaningful manner, which is fine. It worked for me because in many ways, he was on automatic, but I felt like we got the blue balls of Chekhov’s Gun. Because he is on automatic, he poses a threat to anyone, not just criminals, when he is in cop mode, but the flick never delivers. There were really cool visual glitchy effects as if he was a machine unwinding or a demon (think Jacob’s Ladder), but again it goes nowhere. I am grateful that the filmmakers never took the zombie route, but he was not as impressive and mythical a figure as his reputation suggested. He was a bit anticlimactic, but do not blame Kim Coates, who played him.
Actually do not blame any of the actors if you decide to watch Officer Downe and hate it. They worked with what they got and never broke character, but in the end, the filmmakers lacked consistency and ultimately their imagination fell short. The filmmakers needed to work on the story as hard as they did on the imagery. I would recommend that you skip it, but if your standards for comic book movies are lower, maybe the façade will be a sufficient diversion. Just do not blame me if you hate it. I warned you.