Crown Vic goes by the title Bulletproof in the UK and Protect and Serve in Australia, because barely anyone in those countries has any idea what a Crown Vic is. Maybe not that many in the USA do either.
So I’ll tell you. It’s the Ford Crown Victoria cop car, the black and white one that’s been speeding off after bad guys in movies (and on the streets) for at least 20 years, from the start of its production run in 1992. It was made in Canada, ironically enough for a car so iconic in US culture, and is roomy, well built and has rear-wheel drive – so it’s good around corners. Real-life cops tend to like their Crown Vics and want to hang on to them.
Something that’s been around the block a few times and gets the job done? What a handy metaphor for a seasoned cop who’s paid his dues.
A metaphor fully activated in the familiar story of the old hand and the rookie in a night of learning for the young man, Nick Holland (Luke Kleintank), and a night for reflection for the older man, Ray Mandel (Thomas Jane), who sees in the younger man not so much the future as the end.
If you have seen Training Day – older Denzel W and younger Ethan H – then Crown Vic might be a frustrating watch. They’re pretty close to being the same film. But there is also good stuff in here and there are a couple of other cop films to consider while watching. One is End of Watch, an overlooked drama about the human cost of doing policework. And Rampart, in which Woody Harrelson gives one of his unhinged performances, as a cop called “Date Rape” Dave. As you can probably guess, it’s about cops out of control.
Most of Crown Vic is the “night on the job” movie – someone throws a brick at Ray and Nick, they deal with a drunk driver, a druggie, a woman worried about a prowler, a psychotic, a car on fire and so on. But it’s pepped up by little injections of this movie’s “Date Rape” Dave, Jack VanZandt, a cop who appears to be psychotic, or possibly out of it on a mix of steroids and meth. Josh Hopkins is so amplified as VanZandt that he takes control of the entire movie every time he is on screen.
Ray may not be a snow-white cop but he’s no Jack VanZandt either, which does mean something in this weighing of relative moralities. Ray’s also likely to adapt better to changing times when the new era of bodycams and relentless surveillance fully takes over.
Will anything be lost in this brave new world of everything being logged? Writer/director Joel Souza tries to suggest humanity and flexibility might go out the window, though his heart isn’t really in it. He’s on the side of the new world rather than the old one. Of Nick not Ray.
Since making his debut in 2010, Souza has been working his way through the genres – a horror, a western, a Christmas movie and so on. This is his cop movie and to an extent he’s toeing the line, doing a job. But he’s also showing what he can do. It’s hard to assert yourself in the face of all this familiarity but Souza does manage it. His actions scenes are good and suggest panic and rush, sound and frenzy. It’s easy to understand how a cop might get it wrong in such a situation.
As well as Hopkins’s mad turn – casting directors everywhere will have taken note – Souza gets some good performances out of his cast. Kleintank does what he can with a role that’s meant to be a blank piece of paper – Nick is our eyes and ears on the job. Thomas Jane is perhaps the surprise, excellent in a controlled minimalist performance. In the late 1990s Jane was an actor to watch – A list surely inevitable – so god knows what happened there, but here is a reminder of what the excitement was about back then.
Other little bits of fun include Scottie Thompson as a spaced-out babe whose nightrobe keeps accidentally falling open on her doorstep, boggling Nick, barely fazing Ray, who suspects this is a prelude to something more dangerous than a well shaped breast.
I liked it, Thompson’s amusingly whacked performance and the film. None of it is original, but it’s honest, Souza has a way with familiar material and he gets good work out of his cast and crew – everyone concerned behaves like Training Day had never been made.
People who watch too many movies (guilty) put far too much emphasis on originality. Art, in other words. Crown Vic is a craft movie – well made, solid, does the job. Much like the car, appropriately enough.
Crown Vic – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
