Copping a Plea

Once again, JustWatch.com promised me a good action movie, and it turned out to be available as a free trial for some stupid marginal service. So I grabbed the first silly Michael Jai White I came across: Cops and Robbers (2017).

White plays a weary policeman caught up in a bank robbery/hostage situation. It starts with him facing off against the robber, played by MMA fighter Rampage Jackson, in a small house. The police outside listen to their argument over the open walkie-talkie. Then we go back to the start of all this.

Jackson rolls into a bank with a gang of mooks, takes hostages and generally acts crazy. Even his gang wants to know how he plans to get out. But he's confident he can do it. 

The usual hostage negotiator is held up by a suicide jumper. She is also White's psychiatrist - he's been on leave and just getting back. His hard-ass captain is Tom Berenger, who is willing to let him work this situation - especially when Jackson demands that White act as negotiator. And that's because they are brothers. Jackson went to prison while White went into the police. Now Jackson wants to humiliate White and the police in general. 

The action in this movie is mostly psychological, with a little bit of gunplay and almost no hand-to-hand. The filming has a hard digital quality that makes it look kind of cheap. Not that bad, though. I've seen complaints about the acting, but I didn't mind that either. I actually thought the whole brother vs. brother thing worked pretty well. The main problem is that it isn't as tense or clever as it probably wants to be. 

Want to hear a SPOILER? The twist is that the brothers were in it together all along. The bank robbery was to retrieve some information on police corruption. The psychiatrist was lured away by a phony jumper, because she knew that the brothers had recently reconciled. The fight in the house was staged, and there was a tunnel out. OK, that was pretty good, and it explained some of the rest of the movie, including, maybe, the bad acting. 

But it wasn't enough. The first two acts just weren't enough to make it worth it. A similar movie, Man on a Ledge, worked a lot better. And I don't think White is getting too old for a few fight scenes.