White Cop

Have you ever typed White Cop into a search engine? Not the best news articles come up, but when you search for the White Cop movie, you will see something much less racist. This Caucasionsploitation film is a throw back to the classic movies where the cop is also a vampire, or also a samurai, or also a maniac, or also a kindergarten teacher. In this film, they raise the holy cow "and also" theme by making the cop also be… a white guy! The acting choices are top notch by using the affectionate Ben Kobold, the California Christian Science public access star David Liebe Hart (because of course he is!) and various background characters who reoccur in various scenes. This is perfectly placed when one of the background characters reveals she is a main character, but she's in different clothes and a different scene causing Officer Kip White to question if he actually knows her character yet. Either that, or Kip is so upset over the loss of his best friend JJ that he doesn't pay attention to anyone outside the investigation. Our good city Chicago also plays a nice role in this flick by using memorable locations that told them they were allowed to film there. Places like Margie's Ice Cream, Hungry Brain Bar, and that Sybaris hotel you used to see in commercials as a kid. You know which one I mean, the one with the couple in the hot tub? All helps when you have a character that is about as gritty as an evening in Lake View. This movie is worthy of its own Ghana movie poster.

White Cop is a hyper-self-aware, campy, film. I can't tell if it's making fun of buddy cop movies from the 80's, or blacksploitation movies of the 70s. But I think that's the point. It constantly jumps back and forth across the line of the absurd.

Ben Kobold as Kip White carries the film with ease. It's fun to watch him as Kip - tip toeing around his sexuality, physicality and, angry dimwittedness. His unique look in the film adds to the weirdness in a good way.

Joe Ferrel is a solid chief and Will Flanagan as another detective steals the scenes he's in. Jennifer Mills plays the bartender with just the right amount of lust and takes the role serious enough that we really believe her and her motives.

There are some parts that feel out of place, or that they drag on for too long - The music-video training montage wasn't as fun as it should have been. David Liebehart makes an appearance as the mayor, but really fails to deliver the gravitas the role needed. Liz Harvey also feels underutilized and slapped on a weird accent.

All in all - the movie was worthwhile. It made me laugh where it should have and feel weird when it should have. The ending perfectly goes where it should to make it satisfying.

This movie is not what you think it is. With a name like White Cop, the mind of the uninitiated can jump to some very heavy conclusions. This film, however, is about as heavy as a blue whale on Mercury; that is, its about a third as heavy as you would think. As Meyers himself said of the film before the premier, "Get ready to feel really weird about white people, masculinity, and the law." In a cinematic landscape dominated by hyper masculine, hyper violent, and hyper sexual renditions of the men of law enforcement, White Cop slams on the brakes and grinds the gears into reverse, flipping these filmic tropes with a result that is painfully hilarious and endearingly awkward. White Cop sits comfortably within, and yet transcends, the genre of campy B-list cop movies. The blatant self awareness of the genera from which it stems, and the films constant hyper simplification and stylization, allows White Cop to hold up a mirror to late 20th century action cinema, albeit a fun house mirror, that throws back a reflection that is both easier and harder to stomach than the genera films to which it pays awkward homage. This film is ludicrous, chunky, and homegrown, incorporating actors across the spectrum of competence, with the result that every scene is an unpredictable escapade of satirical caricatures, affected fisticuffs, and strange accents. Moreover, having been filmed primarily in Chicago, and drawing heavily upon the less cinematically featured aspects of Windy City, White Cop gives you Chicago from the inside out, no Navy Pier but lots of CPD. So if you're into this kind of thing, and you're looking for something to watch with the kids (White Cop features NO PROFANITY, holy sh*t!), see if you can track down a copy of White Cop, it will be well worth your time.

When I was a kid I rented Clerks on a whim from Blockbuster Video because I liked the cover and had read some tiny, tiny blurb about it in some magazine. I immediately fell in love with it , dissected it, studied it and it was one of the things that pushed me into pursuing a career in comedy writing.

If i'd seen White Cop when I was a kid it would have had the same effect. I would have made all my friends watch it a hundred times over and I would memorize every line.

This movie gets the right push and it will be a Cult Classic.

If you are lucky enough to hear about it, go seek it out and watch it!

Also, Ben Kobold does an incredible job as Kip White. You will have to watch it over and over just to catch all his hilarious dialogue.

You will know very early in this low-budget, underground comedy if it is the kind of humor you find funny. I find it freaking hilarious. It is the sort of comedy where the plot is something you might see in an actual cop movie, but the performances, action and dialogue are all absurdly ridiculous. Which is quite a feat - I mean, while the movie comes across as being completely silly, you can tell a lot of intelligence went into making it seem so incompetent. The "plot" as it were, concerns Kip White (perhaps the whitest cop to ever grace the silver screen?) who is attempting to bust a ring of criminals in Chicago. But the plot is really just an excuse to have throbbing dream wave music accompany slow-mo drug busts, deranged sex scenes and even a swanky yacht ride. The filmmakers behind 'White Cop' are part of the comedy theater scene in Chicago and you've got to hand it to them for a film that seems so crazy it's quite consistent. It's the funniest movie I've seen all year, and I would definitely place it in my top ten for 2014. I'm glad to have seen it at Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema here in Greensboro, NC, because it's important to support indie filmmaking; even the kind that never makes it to an art house chain theater. The filmmakers behind 'White Cop' succeeded in making me and the whole theater howl with laughter throughout the whole screening. I look forward to future films from director Jake Myers and his irreverent team of ragamuffins. There's more to movies than just the multiplexes, people.

Philip Brubaker