Cop Car

Two runaway boys find an abandoned police car, quickly figure out how to drive it, and are soon kangarooing down empty Colorado backroads, unaware that its corrupt cop driver wants it back...with extreme prejudice. Here's a high-concept B-movie of real distinction, the sheer guile of this malign cop contrasting beautifully with the innocence of the boys. It's another great bad-guy role for Kevin Bacon, whose dead eyes make no grab for sympathy, while youngsters Hays Wellford and James Freedson-Jackson make the most of their wide-eyed dialogue as the naughty boys who, for all their attempts at grown-up bluster, have no idea what danger they're in. The film goes large on the Americana of rural homesteads, roadside diners and dented pickup trucks, and the tense plot ensures that even when the boys aren't being directly menaced by Bacon's Sheriff Kretzer, there's jeopardy aplenty as they start playing about with the equipment in his car. It was this movie that brought director/co-writer Jon Watts to the attention of the Marvel producers, and his next project would be Spider-Man: Homecoming.