Welcome to another installment of the TRASH BIN, where we watch the worst movies Hollywood has to offer, according to the critics, and give you our thoughts, good or bad. For this week’s offering, I didn’t have to dig very far down into the bin to find the indie, graphic novel-based, action movie, OFFICER DOWNE!
This film was lying right there at the top of the heap of recent movies that have been tossed in thetrash bin almost as soon as it was released. After wasting…err I mean spending time watching this movie, I can certainly see why it ended up here.
Officer Downe is based on a graphic novel written by Joe Casey and Chris Burnham. Casey returns to the property to pen the screenplay and is joined by director M. Shawn Crahan from the heavy metal group Slipknot, which should give you some indication of what to expect. I had never heard of the graphic novel before seeing this movie, so I went into watching it from a total outsider’s perspective.
Officer Downe stars Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) as the title character in this futuristic story. Downe is a ‘Dirty Harry’-type LAPD police officer with a cheesy looking ‘70’s style mustache. Downe, who died while on duty, was then resurrected and weaponized through technology that regenerates him and gives him super strength. He's been fighting crime, dying and coming back for over twenty-five gruesome and gory years. His other talent is a non-crimefighting one, which is the ability to give women multiple orgasms through oral sex. In fact, this movie provides the viewer with an ‘orgasm counter’ in the lower left hand corner of the screen during these scenes just so you can see how talented he is. At one point, while, Downe’s rookie cop partner Gable (played by Tyler Ross), lurks outside the window, this counter goes up to a mind numbing 34 count! Officer Downe may be the only non-porno movie to include so many depictions of this kind of sex scene.
If you haven’t guessed already, this is the kind of content that sets the tone for this entire movie. In Officer Downe, Police Chief Berringer played by Lauren Luna Velez, decides it’s time for Downe to have a partner to tag along, but not really doing much in the way of real police work since Downe is a one-man force all on his own. It’s interesting to note that Velez had not only her name, but the name of the character she played removed from the IMDB credits of this movie. Not sure whose choice it was to do that, but it may end up being a good move for her even though she brought a screen presence to the role and kept if from falling into the parody trap. Berringer along with Gable were the movie’s ‘straight men’.
Let me tell you, Officer Downe was desperately in need of a ‘straight man’ to add counterbalance to the over the top crazy adversaries and villains; a syndicate calling itself The Fortune 500 made up of people with animal heads; machine wielding, arms dealing nuns led by Mother Supreme (Meadow Williams); and a crazed ninja assassin named Zen Master Flash (Sona Eyambe) who can teleport. Downe has his hands full when his tongue isn’t busy. Kim Coates brings the requisite macho overdrive to that role needed to keep it even the least bit believable to the audience, while also being able to show us the cracks appearing in Downe’s psyche.
Officer Downe isn’t the only one who has been experimented on by government scientists at this futuristic LAPD. While doing some unauthorized investigating, Gable stumbles onto a secret lab where a scientist name Branham played by Sam Witwer experiments on severely disabled men and women who possess telekinetic powers and who have volunteered for the project. They must eventually bring their powers together to help save Downe from Zen Master Flash and his cohorts. All of which are working for Fortune 500.
It’s apparent that M. Shawn Crahan was trying to recreate the look and feel of the graphic novel which led him to film Officer Downe in a way that mimics and often parodies the ‘grindhouse’ style of film. But because there were absolutely no attempts to be subtle about anything in the creation of this movie, I was left feeling like it was trying too hard to be visually cool looking. Instead of that, Officer Downe comes off as a jumbled, eye sore of a movie that never seems to be able to pull itself together. But hey, there’s still that nifty orgasm counter that no other action or graphic novel-based movie has ever included before.
CRITICS' SCORES
Rotten Tomatoes: 50%
IMDb: 4/10
Variety: 0.5/5
JoBlo.com: 4/10
MARLA’S SCORE: 3/10
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