In the final act of Jody Hill's misunderstood, dismissed, and combatively incisive Observe and Report, a tactical team of cops, equipped with guns, batons, and power, swarms an empty mall. There's no active shooter and no larger threat of violence to which they're responding, just a security guard the police have already declared to be pathetic, trespassing after hours in the place where he once worked.
With its many dick jokes, racist-minstrel-y accents from supporting characters, and prolonged "fuck you" exchange between Rogen's character and Aziz Ansari's, Observe and Report bears the non-PC qualities of late-aughts comedy. But it was never really a comedy.
In both its presumed genre and in the larger era of Obamacore, Observe and Report was an anomaly: a prickly, somewhat hostile film wary of our police state and critical of our nationwide myth of meritocracy.
Where so much of onscreen storytelling at the time was steeped in histrionic levels of sincerity and reverence for American institutions, Hill's film had no interest in promoting the status quo or hiding whatever rottenness is present in this country's criminal-justice system.
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