On Wednesday night, celebrities and viewers gathered at Village East Cinema in NYC for a special screening of Crown Vic, a cop drama that was then released in theaters across NYC and LA on Friday November 8th.
The film follows two LAPD officers – one a wide-eyed rookie and the other a hardened veteran – as they patrol the crime-riddled streets of LA one fateful night. The theatrical feature debut of the director, Joel Souza, Crown Vic first opened at Tribeca Film Festival to mixed reviews – such as one hailing it as a “truly astounding work from beginning to end,” while others nixed it as awash with cliches, a cop thriller that we have seen “a thousand times before.” The film makes up for its predictable programming and overworked writing with strong performances by an A-list cast, most notably Bridget Moynahan as a junkie whose daughter goes missing, and Thomas Jane as the career cop who leads the charge against a string of criminals throughout the night.
The film, released through Screen Media, is most notably produced by Alec Baldwin, who attended the screening along with the cast and his wife, Hilaria. Alec spoke briefly about what he hopes viewers will take away from the film: “You know the ‘you know what’ is going to hit the fan eventually, and the only question is how do you build to that, what happens before everything goes splat,” he said. “And I think these guys did a great job of teeing up that ball – so when the crazy happens, you’re so ready for a release. So you know, I’m not a person who loves violent action films all the time, but I love this violent action film. The bad guy – you want the bad guy to get it so bad. And he does.”
Alec touched on what makes this film attractive to viewers, and what distinguishes it from other films in its genre, telling the Knockturnal “well you know there’s a lot of cop drama, lawyer drama, medical drama on TV, and so forth, where the stakes are so high – people are going to go to prison for the rest of their life, they’re going to get cancer and die, they’re going to get arrested and put on trial – those are tropes that we see all the time in movies and TV, so the question becomes how do you make yours different. And this is a movie where it was great writing – Joel did some great writing, he did some great directing, and you know something crazy is going to happen.”
