“Officer Down” is one of those films that looked good on paper. The film has a good cast with Stephen Dorff as the film’s lead and this looked like a gritty cop drama. Like all films that look good on paper, it ultimately fails on execution.
The film follows Challahan (Stephen Dorff), a dirty cop who was shot in a drug bust gone wrong and is saved by a stranger. One year later, the stranger comes clean about those events and seeks revenge for a string of assaults that are happening to a group of young women at a local strip club. Challahan has to revert to his wrong and dirty ways to find how his dark past played into those crimes. This leads him down a dark and violent road of deception, cover-ups and fraud to find out who the stranger is and if he’s responsible for the attacks.
I had high hopes that “Officer Down” would be a good film with the cast involved. But those hopes were dashed, when I clicked the play movie option. From the first minute until to the last minute of the film, I was completely bored out of my mind. I hate it, when you have good cast like Stephen Doff with former and current TV stars Dominic Purcell, James Woods, and David Boreanaz and the film turns out to be a giant piece of crap.
One of the reasons that this film fails on all level was the direction. This film was a very boring to watch, as I was not interested with what was going. Director Brian A Miller brought no energy to the way that he directs some of the film’s scenes. The scenes felt very flat and dull. There’s no attempt to make the action engaging to get the viewer interested. The flashback scenes were worse. There was no need for the flashback scenes to be in black and white. The only thing that the black and white flashback sequences did was to slow the film down. When the film is noticeably slowed down due to the direction not catching your attention then your film is in trouble. The acting was worse than his direction of the scenes. With a supporting cast like Dominic Purcell, David Boreanaz and James Wood, this film should have been at least watchable. But it isn’t here, because they were giving hardly anything to do due to the screenplay and Miller’s lackluster direction. He couldn’t even make Stephen Dorff’s performance work, as it felt like Dorff was brooding for ninety minutes. When your main performance is like that for the entire film, it’s no wonder why I was on my computer on and off during the film. The direction on all levels felt like it was phoned in. Maybe it was the fact that he had a very bad screenplay, but it’s no excuse to even try and make the scenes or the acting watchable.
John Chase’s screenplay was one of those screenplays, where it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a cop drama or full blown mystery. First, there were too many ineffective flashback sequences involving the main character. It hurts the flow of the film, especially when it involves his drug and alcohol problems. I couldn’t tell what the story wanted to be. Was it about the case or about the main character’s life spiraling out of control? When you’re wondering that, then your screenplay starts heading south and you lose viewers. That and the direction made me not care about the story. The other thing that irked about this film was the fact that the characters were one dimensional. I was really bored watching those characters, as they felt flat and had no dimension to them. It made me not care about anything that happened in the film.
We’re only in the first month of the New Year and already we have a early contender for worst film of the 2013. “Official Down” suffers from flat direction and a story that can’t decide what it wants to be. Please avoid this film at all cost.
Review Rating: One Star
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