You have to admire the ambition of director Ryan Prows’ Night Patrol, which mostly veers out of “unwatchable territory” thanks to the strength of its ideas, committed performances from RJ Cyler and Nicki Micheaux, and cinematographer Benjamin Kitchens’ gritty shooting style that gives even the most banal of compositions a crepuscular glow.
Sinners meets Training Day is a quick shorthand to describe the premise, which focuses on an LAPD officer who discovers the supernatural underbelly of a corrupt police force that’s been targeting his community. It’s not as exciting or as scintillating as either of those cinematic touchstones (Bright may be a more appropriate sibling), but Night Patrol’s premise brims with such madcap energy that you’d be hard-pressed not to be captivated.
Part of what gives Night Patrol its galvanic rhythm is that Prows and his rolodex of writers (himself along with Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, and Shaye Ogbonna) give their LA a lived-in sense of history. It makes the ensuing corruption and violence we see more impactful because the cruelty on display has ancient, sickly roots.
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We first meet Wazi (RJ Cyler) in the car with his girlfriend (Zuri Reed) as he gets ready to gift her a family heirloom: his mother’s Zulu ring. The shrill sounds of sirens and the piercing lights of police car headlights interrupt their intimate moment as the two are ordered to step out of the vehicle, apropos of nothing, and put their hands behind their backs. It’s an infuriatingly all too familiar image of unarmed youth of color being brutalized by police officers; Prows only doubles down on disturbing imagery from there. An officer, Hawkins (Justin Long), kills Wazi’s girlfriend, and Wazi escapes before he’s similarly executed.
Hawkins is then inducted into his precinct’s legendary Night Patrol task force, as the powers that be are satisfied by his willingness to shoot first and bury bodies later. Meanwhile, Carr (Jermaine Fowler), Hawkins’ police partner and Wazi’s older brother, teams up with local gang leaders, his estranged mother (Nicki Micheaux), to defend their community against Night Patrol’s impending attack, as the police have used Wazi’s escape as a justifiable excuse to go to the neighborhood and carve through its inhabitants.
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Right up to the film’s cheeky tagline (“Defang the police”), Prows clearly wants to refract his social commentary through the prism of genre tropes. There’s an unholy undergirding to the Night Patrol forces that makes them seem more like monsters than men. When Prows finally lifts the veil on what Night Patrol really is, it’s cleverly expected. I won’t name the creature, but it’s not hard to think about what blood sucking creature that thrives in the shadow of darkness and avoids the revealing light would fit the bill as an allegory for crooked, power-hungry law enforcement.
There are some natural connections drawn between predator police tactics and undead mythology that are reimagined in clever ways. For example, Night Patrol can bypass the need for an “invitation” to invade the community because they’ve been given sanction by their superiors to quell any insurrection and root out any trouble makers. It brings to mind all the ways that authoritarian regimes (present administration included) will deploy armed forces under the guise of protection and peacekeeping, when in reality such tactics are fueled by their own nefarious agenda.
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It takes a delicate balance to critique these issues while also trying to mine thrills, and it’s not one that Prows always does well. Take a sequence where Night Patrol storms Wazi and his mom’s community and opens fire. It’s sickening and disturbing, but it’s all backed up by an energetic score from Pepijn Caudron, which makes it confusing as to whether we’re supposed to feel disturbed or riveted. It’s all a setup for an admittedly epic showdown where Wazi and rival gang members, mixing contemporary firepower with Zulu magic, go head to head with their supernatural enemies. But it’s also a jarring moment that would have benefited from a more thoughtful touch.
Indeed, it’s when the film is embracing its identity as a genre mash-up that the film thrives. The visual effects team remixes bloodsucker mythology against gang violence to pulpy effect: Night Patrol members don metal fangs to rip into the throats of their victims, bullets tear through undead bodies only for sinews to stitch themselves back together … Night Patrol is most effective when it stops trying to be profound. Nicki Micheaux does commanding, captivating work as the matriarch of the community under siege.
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In a world where people find solace in their guns and artillery, she brings a spiritual sensibility to her work, not afraid to draw upon the richness of her history and traditions to vanquish old evils. It’s her no-nonsense approach to extermination of “white devils” (and the ways he embodies pain whenever one of her community members is killed) that the film achieves that fragile balance of fun and moroseness.
The entire last act of the film is where it threatens to be entirely undone. Prows has an eye for creating individual moments of violence to stark imagery, but it’s when he tries to show larger-scale skirmishes that the film feels shaky and awkward. There’s a lack of a sense of place, as characters run throughout the neighborhood, often ending up in the clutches of their villains, even if the film established that they were farther away in proximity. Characters disappear for long stretches of time, only to reappear to get killed off to give the film some stakes. It’s emblematic of both the appeal and frustration of the film as a whole: Night Patrol never quite hits the highs of the ambitions it strives for, but its risks make this one worth sinking your teeth into.
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