'Copaganda' conundrum: 'Tango& Cash' vs. 'French Connection'

In the aftermath of the George Floyd-Breonna Taylor police murders there's been a bit of a reckoning with what activists call 'cop-a-ganda' -- or in other words films and television that contribute to a destructive over-romanticization of policing and police work. I must admit, I'm a little defensive on the subject, if for no other reason than so many movies I love focus on the trials and tribulations of cops.

I honestly don't think the filmmaker's intent -- necessarily -- is to glorify cops. It's just that the very nature of policework can raise the stakes -- they make for compelling heroes, anti-heroes and yes, villains.

In fact, I think TV is far more complicit in brainwashing the American public about the temperament and morals of police officers. Shows like the Law & Order franchise largely cast it cops as nearly flawless, making it easier to digest their actions week to week.

Films can be another beast -- for every Dirty Harry or Beverly Hills Cop there's a Training Day or Bad Lieutenant. In other words, when it comes to portraying people in blue there's often shades of gray, probably not enough but there is enough of a divergence that it's worth taking each film on its own terms.

Recently I watched two cop films -- one acclaimed (The French Connection), the other, infamously bad (Tango & Cash) and they both provided a case study in what Hollywood can get right and wrong about policing (not that anyone can ever achieve perfection).

The most charitable thing you can say about the Kurt Russell-Sylvester Stallone vehicle Tango & Cash is that it is a product of its time.

It's a blatant Lethal Weapon rip-off (another movie with some seriously problematic police tactics) that makes a painful effort to be a comedy but doesn't have a single legit laugh in it.

Meanwhile, it not just fetishizes police brutality but normalizes it -- there's a scene where Kurt Russell presses a chair to the throat of suspect that we're supposed to accept and support, which plays especially gruesome in the aftermath of Floyd's murder.

It's simply understood when you watch that film that anything Russell or Stallone do is justified because they're cops. There's no ambiguity or nuance, and if anything there's a contempt for the rule of law and due process for suspects -- it's pretty much mayhem.

On the other hand of the spectrum there's The French Connection, a far more complex movie than it might appear to be on first glance. It's hero Popeye Doyle, played to perfection by Gene Hackman, is definitely charismatic, but he is also racist, vicious and a little crazy. The film is complex enough for you to be riveted by his pursuit of a drug ring while still being revolted by his worldview. And the finale, which denies Doyle a heroic send-off, and in fact. does the opposite -- says about the filmmaker's ambivalence towards this character. Sure, he 'gets the job done' -- but at what cost?

Realistically, there's probably not going to be an erasure of cop-driven narratives anytime soon and so the least we can do, in the short term, is to aim more for the French Connection model. Cops and not a monolith, and neither are criminals -- and the more flawed both sides of the law are conceived the more interesting they become.

We can also no long present police brutality without context or blowback -- it just isn't realistic anymore and its downright irresponsible. I don't even want to see a cop shoot someone in a movie again unless it has some significance and meaning.

The rest of the old cops of robbers has to stay where it is, in the past.