Cop Car (2015)

Directed by Jon Watts. Starring Kevin Bacon, Hays Wellford, James Freedson-Jackson, Shea Whigham, Camryn Manheim, Sean Hartley, (voice) Kyra Sedgwick. [R]

A couple of delinquent kids stumble upon an abandoned cop car and take it for a joy ride; Bacon is the small-town cop who needs to find it right away (like, really needs to find it). Compact, well-made thriller, directed confidently and photographed with precision. Watts knows how to deliberately ratchet up the tension as the story unfolds, but the plotting becomes less clever on the back end, leading to more conventional episodes of standoffs and violence. Bacon’s performance isn’t particularly deep, but it’s believable, and he’s able to tease at the frayed fringes of his messy, immoral character; the young actors do solid work, too, and the screenplay wisely acknowledges the way that kids can blow trivial details out of proportion and yet shrug at most consequences (it’s less convincing, however, that the whipper-snappers could figure out how to drive a car so quickly).

71/100