Episode 84: Some Cop Movies with Nicholas Russell

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. A while back I had a conversation with critic Nicholas Russell about the portrayal of law enforcement in movies. The general idea was that the demonstrations and marches for justice in 2020 seemed to open the possibility of a paradigm shift on many fronts. So we looked at movies featuring the police and thought about the different assumptions about culture, about society, about genre, that go into making and watching them. How does Training Day look today, 20 years on, or the 1970s drama Report to the Commissioner? What about the bizarro alternate justice system of Minority Report? Russell and I talked about a range of movies from different perspectives, without any grander goal than reflecting on what exactly is going on in each of them. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass