Updated RankingHighway Patrolman (1991)
★ ★ ★ - Okay Surprisingly controlled and mature work that still slips in occasional moments of anarchy. Set in Mexico and focusing on a rookie cop navigating the roads. The discipline is writing tickets, which is the backbone of the job, but the officer keeps encountering bigger crimes: drug smuggling, armed resistance, violent accidents in the middle of nowhere. It’s a coming-of-age film where the cop goes from craving excitement to wishing the job wouldn’t be so life-and-death all the time. A more focused narrative arc might’ve made for a more dramatically powerful film, but with Cox, that’s asking for too much.
Searchers 2.0 (2007)
★ ★ Two former child actors set out to get revenge on a writer who whipped them on set, a set-up that isn't the least bit believable even when placed in context at the end of the story. Acting are terrible, mostly because the low budget could only afford long takes with little ability to edit together a consistent performance or remove a high number of flubbed lines. The characters spend most of their time talking about old movies, especially westerns. Sometimes they even sound like they've seen the film. Sometimes they address the camera directly.
For about twenty-minutes this was easily one of the worst films I've seen all year. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stick with it since Cox put so little care into the project, but a strange fascination took hold. The film rides its own unique groove. Cox may not have the resources, but he knows what he wants the film to be. By the end, when everyone is taking turns naming stuntmen while spread out like the finale of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, it's a little entertaining.