In 2022’s One Cop’s Journey, Keith Knotek (Tim Perez-Ross) is involved in a traffic accident. Because Keith is clearly intoxicated, he’s taken to jail. Because it’s the start of the weekend, Keith is going to have to spend three days in jail before the Magistrate will see him and determine the amount of money that it will take to get him out.
Keith sits in a jail cell for three days. Because he’s a cop, the other police officers treat him with perhaps a bit more sympathy than they would give the usual inmate. You need a private cell? Here you go. You want us to call your wife? No problem! You want to get changed for court in the officer’s locker room? Sure, why not? Here’s a phone, go ahead and call your minister.
That minister is played by Dean Cain. The cop calls the minister and admits to getting a DUI and maybe hurting some people in the car accident.
“We all make mistakes,” Dean Cain replies.
And isn’t that the truth! One Cop’s Journey attempts to show the stress that would lead a cop to start drinking. His partner and best friend is gunned down while pursuing a suspect. Keith, himself, is nearly killed while conducting a routine traffic stop. No one wants to hear the details of what a cop has to deal with on daily basis. His wife has grown tired of him being depressed and emotionally withdrawn all the time and, when she discovers that he never told her about one traumatic incident that happened shortly before they were married, she considers it to be the same as telling her a lie. Worst of all, his teenage daughter decides to attend an anti-police rally, holding a sign that reads “No Justice No Peace,” while her friends all hold signs that read, “Defund the Police.”
Since this is a faith-based film, Keith eventually finds redemption and hope through prayer and he goes on to write a book about the pressures of being a cop. That’s to be expected and, to its credit, the film doesn’t get particularly preachy when it comes to the religious angle. I imagine that most people who would regularly get offended by the religious subtext will be too busy getting upset over the film’s political subtext to really notice.
One Cop’s Journey is thoroughly and unapologetically pro-cop and that’s never more obvious than in the protest scene when the blue collar, salt-of-the-earth policemen find themselves being yelled at by a bunch of bitter geriatrics and a few smirking college students. There’s nothing subtle about it but, then again, there’s nothing subtle about most left-wing movies either. As is so often the case when it comes to political movies, how you react will depend on how you felt about the issue before the movie started. (My own personal opinion is that police reform is something that needs to be considered, especially when it comes to the militarization of the police. At the same time, the “abolish the police” folks were and are living in a fantasy world.)
One Cop’s Journey is only 63 minutes long and there is an effective dream sequence in which Keith finds himself looking at the headshots of everyone who he feels he has left down. That said, the film still had far too many slow spots for so short of a production. Putting Keith in the jail cell really did make the whole thing feel pretty stagey. Still, the film did find the time to share some information about Post Traumatic Stress amongst first responders. It’s heart was in the right place.
Through the Shattered Lens 