2023 Movie
Dir. Michael Oblowitz · United States of America · English, French
An anticlimactic low-budget police drama that tries too hard to be something it's not
Despite a solid premise that should lead to compelling drama—about men scarred by war and the morally grey inner workings of the police—Confidential Informant devolves into a half-baked thriller that’s as dull as its title. Flat direction, a lack of connective tissue between scenes, and an unfortunately visible lack of production resources suck the life out of the script and from the actors’ performances. There’s clearly a foundation to be built upon here, but the film makes a crucial mistake in trying to have its cake and eat it too: it wants to deliver all the (unsatisfying) thrills of an antihero police procedural, but it just doesn’t have the money or the creativity to do this, on top of being a character drama. And so any tension that it tries to build up deflates by the end, its characters nothing but hollow shells, stuck in a story that that never gives them a chance to be anything more interesting.
During a crack epidemic two narcotics agents hunting for a cop killer. Hoping for leads, Moran and Thorton pay off a junkie informant. To provide for his wife and son, Moran involves the stool pigeon in a deadly scheme. This causes the partners to come under the scrutiny of a suspicious internal affairs agent.
Still reeling from his time in the military, an alcoholic cop helps his cancer-stricken partner in the narcotics department pull off a scheme that puts them under the eye of an internal police investigation.
In different hands (and after a number of rewrites), the film's base premise could really lead to something much more successful. One can imagine a version of this script that leaves behind all the obligatory drug bust stuff and focuses squarely on how these policemen characters feel trapped in a world where violence is their only escape. Unfortunately, it really seems like many of these production companies—themselves trapped in a gradually shrinking industry—would rather churn out generic genre pieces instead of taking a risk on more challenging material from filmmakers who are just trying their best.
For the love of god, not everything has to be a hard-boiled genre piece; it's okay for some dramas to just be dramas!
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
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