Officer Downe (2016) - Shawn Crahan

Based on a graphic novel about a police officer who can't die, routinely being killed and resurrected on a nightly basis so he can return to the streets crime-infested streets, Shawn Crahan's Officer Downe provides a gleeful walk through depravity, embracing its absurdity and its comic book roots.  Playful in its repugnant, testosterone-fueled aggression, Officer Downe is not a film that will be enjoyed by the faint of heart, a perverse film in nearly every way which in the end struggles to sustain its 90-minute running time.  Officer Downe is a film that wastes no time establishing the type of film it wants to be, with the opening five minutes featuring a salacious yet hysterical sex sequences, a scene of violence-inducing ass-kickery by our main protagonist, and an opening monologue which is reminiscent of Taxi Driver's iconic monologue about "the filth on the the streets".  Unfortunately the film isn't able to sustain its absurdity and gleeful perversity, with its hyper-activity slowly eroding, buckling under the weight of a narrative and story that truly has very little to say.  The morality of the story, centered around a rookie police officer who questioned the psychological freedom of Officer Downe, never fully develops, playfully dancing around the idea but never giving Officer Downe any real characterization besides his robotic, masculine-fueled aggression.  We as an audience are told he is human deep down who has his own personal head-space but we are never shown it, making it hard to care about the film's driving story centered around the morality of the situation.  It's basically a more absurd version of Robocop, but we never are shown the oppressive nature on this man's psyche making Officer Downe a film that is enjoyable for its absurdity but muddled down when it tries to be something more.  Having such villains as a Killer Nun-Syndicate whose primary weapon is indoctrination, as well as a crime syndicate that goes by the name 'The Fortune 500', Office Downe also oddly and hilariously dances around a social commentary that unfortunately never develops, content on being strange and subversive more than making any type of social assertion, which I suppose one could argue isn't necessarily a bad thing. Shawn Crahan's Officer Down can be highly enjoyable at times, offering a creative, subversive bit of juvenile escapism, but unfortunately it struggles to maintain its momentum, being a film that never manages to be anything more than a relatively fun empty distraction. 

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