In the Line of Duty review – haphazard action thriller

A trigger-happy cop is the hero in this ill-judged US satire

“You shouldn’t judge a man before you walk in his shoes,” says Aaron Eckhart’s Officer Frank Penny, an Alabama cop temporarily stripped of his badge for shooting to kill despite being told to stand down. Steven C Miller’s thriller (not to be confused with the long-running BBC drama) works overtime to justify its trigger-happy hero. Indeed, Frank’s rash instincts enable him to track a kidnapping victim trapped in a water tank with 45 minutes to live.

The tone veers haphazardly from tense, high-stakes cat-and-mouse chase to ill-judged satire, pairing Eckhart’s rightwing cop with millennial vlogger Ava Brooks (Courtney Eaton), who is live-streaming the chase.

Watch a trailer for In the Line of Duty.

Contributor

Simran Hans

The GuardianTramp

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