Starring Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, Freddie Gibbs, RJ Cyler, YG, Nicki Micheaux, Flying Lotus, Phil Brooks, and Dermot Mulroney

Written and directed by Ryan Prows

Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler) is an LAPD officer and former Crip. Hawkins is good at his job, overlooked, bored, and has a surprisingly close friendship with former Special Forces Operator turned cop Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long). Hawkins has just been accepted onto the legendary LAPD Night Patrol. Xavier didn’t make the cut and doesn’t know why. He also doesn’t know that Hawkins was accepted when he executed a woman on Deputy (CM Punk)’s orders. His younger brother Wazi (RJ Cyler) saw it happen. And he survived…

Night Patrol shifts from an End of Watch-esque LAPD movie to a horror movie to a nuanced and incredibly angry piece of social commentary that plays like John Carpenter at his best. Not all of it works, but it runs headlong at everything with the same energy and when it lands it LANDS.

Fowler and Cyler are key here. Fowler is incredible as a cop seething with the need to Do something, not quite sure what that is and a growing willingness to do Anything. He thinks he’s Axel Foley, and on his best day he might be, but this is no one’s best day. There’s snap and bite to his scenes with Long, two men struggling to hold a friendship together based on lies and tension, that’s funny, and terrifying and can only end in violence. It’s incredible work and Fowler is the heart of the movie in all the scenes Cyler isn’t.

Cyler carries the third act and turns in a gloriously untidy, open-hearted performance. We first meet him with a mysterious dagger in his side, quietly bleeding to death in an LAPD interrogation room and the exhausted venom he brings to that beat is built through a movie length flashback. I rewatched The Chronicles of Riddick recently and Cyler plays with similar beats to Diesel in that movie. Wazi is endlessly capable, endlessly traumatised and almost entirely powerless until he very suddenly isn’t. He’s exhausted, beaten down but not beaten and you root for him from the moment you meet him.

These two men are by far the best part of the movie but they’re not the only elements that work here. Wrestler CM Punk continues his unbeaten record of fun cameos as Deputy. Jon Oswald is great as Rivette, Xavier’s new partner who is just as much of an asshole but not as evil as the Night Patrol. Nicki Micheux is superb as Xavier and Wazi’s mom Ayanda, the only person who knows the genre of movie they’re in and Freddie Gibbs is incredible as Bornelius, the head of a parapsychology obsessed gang. Justin Long impresses too as Hawkins and continues to find his most interesting work in his darkest of places. Xavier and Wazi are more than they think they are. Hawkins is less. That realisation dooms almost everyone in the movie.

There are some lovely, new touches too. The payoff for why Night Patrol use iron fangs is great, and there’s a moment where one of them changes their uniform that tells you more than a thousand lines could. The image of them walking unopposed into Ayanda’s housing development, the lights going out around them is chilling. There’s constant visual invention here as well as a large cast and a smart script. It doesn’t all work, and Dermot Mulroney as Sarge is especially under-used but the movie throws itself headlong at you and you can’t help but admire its determination.

That’s what really stays with you about Night Patrol. The movie makes multiple choices, a lot of  of which it’s been unfairly criticised for, that are the last thing you’d expect this sort of movie to make. All of them speak to the unsustainable. yet sustained, situation Night Patrol uses genre to explore: Institutionalised racism, collaboration with broken systems. The cold comfort of small victories and the fact familial expectation can be both a shelter and a curse. These are big ideas and it deals with them all head on with intelligence, grace and brutality.

Verdict: Not all of it works. Not all fights can be won. Try anyway. Night Patrol does. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Night Patrol is on Shudder and NOWTV now.