Post by ronnierocketago on Jul 30, 2009 6:29:57 GMT
MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE (1993) - **1/2
So here is the final chapter of the MANIAC COP saga, the last hurrah for our dead-but-not-really-dead Maniac Cop Matt Cordell. Since I reviewed the other MANIAC COP movies, I won't rehash the mythology, go read those reviews to be fully briefed. You should just know that that in uniform, he is practically impossible to killl and also has a nasty tendency to kill people, deserving or not. Somebody should file a citizen's complaint against him.
COP fans consider this to be the weakest entry of the trilogy, and there is of course a history of a good film series going to hell at number 3. STAR WARS originals, THE GODFATHER, LETHAL WEAPON, etc. Certainly we start off on the wrong foot when COP 3 begins with a text prologue. Why? Anyone who rents or watches this title assumingly have seen the previous pictures. I'm reminded of TERMINATOR SALVATION using the same plot device, despite hundreds of millions surely having seen the earlier predequels for decades. Yeah, I don't want McG thrown into any conversation about MANIAC COP.
But we get a replay of COP 2's ending, including the uncut, uncensored bloody massacre at the police precinct. Pure filler to save money, but that didn't stop COP 2, which did the same with the first COP finale footage. Maybe not this time. We begin with that COP 2 ending intercut with some mumbo jumbo magical ritual that apparently revives Cordell from the grave. I like how we see the Catholic priest saying this gibberish and we obscurely see a head across from him, someone else there to help him cast this spell. Then it's revealed that it's a decapitated head chopped off some dead homeless guy. I don't think any of this was sanctioned by Rome.
With MANIAC COP 3: BADGE OF SILENCE, we have policewoman Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Becker), a trigger-happy, tough as nails supercop (she uses hollow-point bullets) which garners her the derogatory nickname "Maniac Katie." She shares a similar fate to her namesake. At a pharmacy heist, she is shot and rendered braindead by the junkie robber (Oscar-nominated rorschach Jackie Earle Haley) who survives but not her insider accomplice. The press records this bloodbath, manipulates the footage to blame Sullivan as the overexcessive perpetrator. Haley the "victim" threatens to sue the city, the D.A. cuts a plea deal to kill the suit: 6 months prison sentence plus "adequete compensation." Cordell hears this on the radio, and...well, he's not the sort of guy you want pissed off.
Now before we go on, I have a problem with that entire set-up. Sure the DIRTY HARRY series and many other 70s/80s movies loved to beat up on the press as the sensationalistic lying leeches, but the best pictures that used this device at least made it plausible to a point. Consider in COP 3, Haley already had killed three cops before Becker even arrives on the scene. Yet the press nor anybody else ever mentions this fact again. I sincerely doubt that the police union would completely roll over and shrug off their fellow dead (and accused) coppers. Also such overmanipulation and stacking of the decks is just cheap writing. I expect much less creative lazyness from the usually slick writer/producer Larry Cohen.
Off-topic, but I am reminded of that whole recent nonsensical Gates issue. You know, where a white cop finds a black man breaking into a house and is arrested...except the Gates guy is a respected Harvard professor, and he was only trying to get back into his house because he locked himself out. The first reports framed this as another embarrasing racial incident, then maybe it turns out that the cop wasn't racial profiling and the professor was just pissed that as a upper-middle class affluent African American, he's treated like the rest of his fellow (worse off) blacks. Or maybe not? Regarldess of the truth or what happened, your usual moronic partisan/ideological hawks have already taken sides and combated. Unfortunately this includes President Obama, who's derided "stupidly" comment was based off those initial reports. He wasn't the only one.
The Gates story is now about everything but Gates, and those mindless radio/TV warriors won't let facts or reality get in the way of their truthy opinions. Meanwhile we're stuck in two wars, one that is held only by a soaked up band-aid and another that may become a fool hardy, expensive, and pointless excursion by a White House to prove it's manly despite the party label. We have healthcare fucking stalled (again), the quiet green democratic resistence persists in Iran despite the Mullahs, and hey the DOW is now over 9,000 points but what is the whole story? Gates Gates Gates. The one headline of the bunch that absolutely doesn't matter at all to our lives.
Speaking of which, Cohen still slips in his usual political commentary in COP 3, as if he wanted to make up for that absence in COP 2. We have the press in the car searching the police scanner for a good story. Not a story, but the right one that gets high ratings. Black youth murdered? No. Deadly warehouse fire? "Network won't bother unless we get at least three confirmed kills" Driveby shooting? Nah. Victim was a kid? OH YES! Same press interview kid's brother and the cameraman gives his own condescending line: "Well, life's a bitch."[/i]
Which leads to why I don't care for COP 3, which is that Cordell is a hero here. Every asshole, bastard, and leech conspiring to shame the honor of ole Katie is dispatched, and that's wrong. Oh sure he still exterminates some people who get in his way, but overall he's still angled roughly as the avenging vigilante or whatever. A charm of the other MANIAC COP movies is that as tragic and wronged Cordell is, he's still a rampaging monster that must be stopped ultimately. Why was Cordell resurrected in the first place, which was before the wronged woman? By the words of the priest, to "equalize the misdeeds" Translation: Without this, there would be no COP 3. Also, there is I guess this whole BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN element that Cohen attemps here, with Cordell wanting a mate of his own. It doesn't work for me, and I never cared or was ever compelled.
COP 3 has alot of the basic ingredients of the other COP pictures, and I enjoy them as distantly warm as I did the others, but COP 3 never answers a question that every filmmaker considering a sequel should ask: "Why do we want to make this?"[/i] The answer for COP 3 is more money, the same response (unfortunately) most such horror fare use. There is no need for Cordell to stop his eternal slumber, except the producers needed to pay off their dental bills.
Plus the filmatics are shakey and a tad off. Turns out original director William Lustig, who helmed the previous COP flicks, was fired by producer Joel Soisson, who took over the production. Soisson's filmography amounts to producing BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, that Chris Walken vehicle THE PROPHECY, and many many (shitty) direct-to-video horror sequels. I won't declare Lustig a great director or necessarily a creative one, but he seems competently professional with this sort of stuff, which means he's golden considering his competition. Soisson co-wrote HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME. Enough said.
Still COP 3 surprisingly has a good cast. Robert Davi is back in his hero cop role from COP 2, Becker is feminine but not too masculine to make up the supposed gender gap with her "badgirl" archetype, Haley is just sleazy fun. This includes short appearances from the late Paul Gleason, Oscar nominated B-actor icon Robert Forster, and Grand Bush. Holy rocks, Davi/Bush/Gleason...this is a DIE HARD reunion! We even get a Ted Raimi cameo as a reporter pompous outraged at this violence, complementing the cameo of his older brother, director Sam Raimi in the first MANIAC COP.
But looking back at my COP reviews, I never wrote anything regarding Robert Z'Dar, who plays Cordell. What an injustice on my part, for such a mute role where the character is mostly seen partially only from a distance or in the shadows, you need the right sort of physically intimidating presence to make this sillyness succede. And I'll admit it, with or without make-up, I wouldn't want to meet Z'Dar alone in an alley at the dead of night. His chin might in fact outchin Bruce Campbell.
And if you haven't realized it, the filmmakers finally decided I guess to make Cordell an official outright zombie. 'Bout time you guys, and it'll come in handy with a show-stopping scene when completely ablazed (again), he drives a car. Now that's new. It's ridiculously juicy moments like those that I live for, and this MANIAC COP line-up always delivers them. How about Mr. Cordell throwing a jerk 20 feet into the air, Cordell empties a full of bullets into him, and the dead body drops on the pavement? The guy sure loves to overkill. You'll also get your usual creative fantasy slasher genre murders, like debibrillators to the face and guy strapped to an X-ray machine.
My favorite has to be Robert Davi (back in his hero cop role from COP 2) lighting up a cigarette with Cordell's flaming severed arm. In fact he has quite a few nice moments, like the detail that he's become acknowledge about the occult. Well wouldn't you after MANIAC COP 2? Also this one fucked-up-but-funny-as-hell scene, he finds that decapitated bum's body, and one of the cops had chalked a smiley face on the ground where the stiff's head should be. And Davi laughs. Inappropriate you might say, but considering all the gruesome awful shit such cops (like those in New York I assume), a good sense of humor is needed to soldier through this daily nightmare.
COP 3 is absolutely forgettable, and holds no substantive reason for any viewer to check it out unless they're completist COP fans. Not a bad film, but shit this shouldn't be a praise. That said, we should give applause the MANIAC COP franchise. Most slasher/horror/monster series from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET to HALLOWEEN to HELLRAISER and yada yada, start off good, then find a (financial) comfortable routine, and hit the pits. The COP flicks at their best are decent junk entertainments. At their worst, they are...decent junk entertainments. The only other similar genre batting age over the long haul I can compare MANIAC COP with is the PSYCHO films. A masterpiece followed by two totally solid sequels, and even a watchable #4.
Lustig last year claims that a fourth MANIAC COP is in development, and you know what? I'll be there, because you can't keep a good (dead) cop down.