Gerard Butler wants to be the Tom Hanks of action movies, but he seems pretty happy with being dubbed “The King of the B-Move” instead. However, none of the actor’s action thrillers have fared as well as critics as Joe Carnahan’s Copshop, which is cruelly ironic when it ended up bombing at the box office.
While it isn’t the best-reviewed entry in the grizzled Scotsman’s entire filmography, it’s comfortably the top-rated among his runners and gunners on Rotten Tomatoes after being Certified Fresh with an 82 percent score. A 74 percent audience approval rating underlines that fans loved it just as much, even though nobody paid to see it on the big screen.
Despite carrying a thrifty budget of only $6 million with which to tell the twisting tale of Frank Grillo’s conman being trapped inside a small town holding cell with Butler’s hitman just one of the contract killers demanding his head, Copshop couldn’t even recoup $7 million in ticket sales during its disastrous run at the multiplex.
That’s a crying shame when it’s a fun, fast-paced, and frenetic adventure that sees both Grillo and Butler subvert their established screen personas to wildly entertaining effect. Thankfully, streaming always has a way of dusting off hidden gems that shouldn’t have been buried in the first place, with FlixPatrol revealing Copshop to be one of the top-watched titles on Prime Video.
You know exactly what you’re going to get when you see Butler’s name front-and-center on a trigger-happy project, but that’s precisely what the people want to see.