Coppers

A stirring documentary, Coppers follows Alan Zweig as he interviews about a dozen retired police officers about their less-than-sunny experiences on the job – with the director eliciting stories from his disparate subjects that rarely paint a positive picture of the profession. Filmmaker Zweig certainly doesn’t shy away from the more gruesome aspects of the job (eg one individual recalls the time he watched a man’s face get sewed back on), and it does become clear that Coppers is intended to shine a light on the psychological toll this line of work can have on a person – with the movie, as a consequence, bursting at the seams with bleak tales of a cop’s day-to-day existence. The very nature of the picture’s structure ensures that certain subjects are far more interesting and compelling than others, ultimately, with, for example, the ongoing appearances by a woman who was badly mistreated by other officers (and was even disowned by her father when she eventually quit) standing as an obvious high point within the proceedings. The end result is a compelling (if slightly overlong) documentary that effectively explores a side of law enforcement one generally doesn’t consider or think about, and Zweig certainly deserves credit for cajoling such brutal honesty from his myriad of talking-head figures.

*** out of ****