Officer Down [Blu-Ray]

Officer Down is a cop thriller that has straight-to-video written all over it. The script is a string of clichés: a cop with a crooked past, an officer named Callahan (no, not Dirty Harry), his perfectly bland, er, blonde wife, an estranged teenage daughter, strippers, flashbacks to a shooting, a precinct captain (James Woods) going ballistic, an all-white cast and a few black guys who play villains. Officer Down takes a long time to get going and in the process loses the viewer. Boozy, cokehead Detective David Callahan (Stephen Dorff) has trouble sleeping because flashbacks to his near-fatal shooting haunt him. A diary written by a stripper falls into his hands. The stripper recounts being beaten and raped one night, which spurs Callaghan to action, leadinb to the film's eventual twist. Flashbacks to Callaghan's shooting bog down the first half of the film and are confusing. Furthermore, the tone is unrelentingly dour, without a hint of irony or black humour that would have enlivened things. Dorff (Blade, Backbeat) is a fine actor and he does well shaping a thin character, lending Callahan sympathy and pathos. He's a flawed man, but you want to see him beat his demons. However, there's nothing surprising, daring or original in this film to lift the viewer out of his seat. Officer Down feels like a pastiche of a hundred other cop dramas and it squanders a good cast. Don't expect any extras on this Blu-Ray, as it comes with just the movie.