Kim Coates-starring Officer Downe will make Crank look like The English Patient, says writer

Crank codirector Mark Neveldine recently told The Movie Crypt podcast that the new action film Officer Downe — on which Neveldine is among the producers — is “better than any Marvel movie or DC movie ever made.” The film’s screenwriter Joe Casey, meanwhile, has a rather different, if no less enthusiastic, view of the film’s mayhemic merits. “This movie makes Crank look like The English Patient,” says Casey.

Officer Downe stars Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates as a Los Angeles cop who is repeatedly revived from death to continue his law-enforcing ways. “He’s brought back to life again, and again, and again, by the LAPD, so he can go out and do what he has to do — administering street justice!” says Casey, who is another of the film’s producers. “Kim Coates is Officer Downe and I mean that almost literally. He inhabited the role so perfectly. We didn’t want to go for some WWE star, no offense to them. We wanted a real actor to give a real performance. And Kim just dove in b—s deep. His performance is amazing.”

The film is the directorial debut of Shawn Crahan, better known as Slipknot founding member and percussionist “Clown.” “Clown’s directed the videos for Slipknot, so he definitely has some experience behind the camera,” says Casey. “He saw the comic, he loved it, it’s right in his wheelhouse of the kinds of films he wants to make. We were lucky to get him and he had a real energy and enthusiasm to tell this story. It wasn’t an ego trip on his part. He wanted to be a real filmmaker and he did a great job. He really stepped up.”

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Officer Downe is based on the Man of Action imprint/Image Comics graphic novel created by Casey and artist Chris Burnham. “The cool thing is, if you see the graphic novel, it’s all in the movie,” says the writer, a co-owner of Man of Action Entertainment. “This is not a situation where we had to go, ‘Okay, well, we have x amount of money, x amount of time, so we can only do x amount of the graphic novel.’ We do the graphic novel and 50 percent more. It’s all in there in all its weird glory.”

Officer Downe receives its world premiere on June 3 as part of the L.A. Film Festival. And then? “Hopefully, it will get bought for distribution — and world domination will follow,” says Casey.

You can see an exclusive image from Officer Downe above and another, below.