Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) Buster Keaton has certainly caused a lot of mayhem in his films, but getting the entire police force of a huge city against him is a first, even for him. This is exactly what happens in "Cops", s silent black-and-white comedy film from 1922. At this point, the end of Buster Keaton's short film career wasn't really far anymore and the end of the careers of Joe Roberts and Virginia Fox wasn't too far anymore either. Keaton wrote and directed this film together with Edward F. Cline, his longtime collaborator and Cline, as almost always, plays a minor character in here again as well. The huge star, however, is Keaton again. Sadly, the action and comedy in this film was not great enough to keep me interested. The ending was interesting though as you don't see such that frequently in films, especially back in the 1910s and 1920s, but it certainly added a bit of the "sad" factor to Keaton's movies in general. However, I do not recommend "Cops". I cannot really see why this was inducted in the National Film Registry.

st-shot Buster Keaton packs an awful of laughs into this 18 minute short with some topical and subversive slapstick that at times reaches epic proportion.Buster once again finds himself rejected by a sweetheart who feels it doesn't have the right stuff to be a wealthy businessman. Disconsolately he sulks his way down the street benignly relieves an ungrateful detective of his cash then gets conned into buying someone else's furniture which he puts on horse drawn wagon and rides off with. The worst is yet to come however when he is suspected to be a bomb throwing anarchist attacking a police parade. Keaton eluding a virtual army of pursuing police makes for some of the best slapstick in silent film history. It is the mother of all keystone cop chases as he finds all sorts of ways to elude the waves of blue converging on him. Leading up to the chase there are little gems as well with Keaton and the detective and a concocted Rube Goldberg invention to ward off vicious dogs that instead floors traffic cops.While Cops glowingly achieves what it sets out to do, produce torrents of laughs, it is worth noting how Keaton subversively creates a world of hostility and corruption as an unsentimental backdrop. The ex is an unrepentant social climbing gold digger. The ungrateful detective is coarse and from the look of the roll Keaton relieves him of, on the take. A bomb throwing anarchist ( in an early example of racial profiling a Sacco-Vanzetti look alike), a slick con man, a vicious dog and even Buster himself who in the course of the film builds quite a rap sheet through misunderstanding displays an intolerant, exploitive society that makes Keaton final act in Cops resonate with a comic existential flourish.

Lee Eisenberg When I read about "Cops", I got led to believe that the whole movie was a giant chase scene. It turns out that the chase is mostly confined to the last couple of minutes. But those last couple of minutes are pretty wacky! In this case, Buster Keaton tries to find a job but accidentally steals some money and causes a massive police chase. I can imagine that they probably had some fun filming some of the scenes.I actually got the feeling that this movie may have been a semi-sequel to Keaton's previous movie "The Playhouse", in which he and the woman look like they're running off to get married at the end. This one begins with her telling him to get a job or she won't marry him.Whether or not it was, this is still a pretty funny movie.

dvdeugs I don't understand why this film is so highly considered. The first thing I noticed was the actors, who weren't expressive at all. The character who got his money stolen was almost deadpan. Even Buster Keaton seemed flat. I didn't find this film funny at all; it had light physical comedy, but not pressed to the extreme like good physical comedy, and no real social comedy. Comparing this film to those of Harold Lloyd, I don't get the sense of life or action that made Harold Lloyd's films of the same era so funny.