Cop

This mean, moody, and muddled Dirty Harry-style thriller, adapted from James Ellroy's crime novel Blood on the Moon, brutally manhandles its feminist theme and debases Woods' rare talent for portraying sympathetic psychotics. Other than that it's slickly made, violent, and (intentionally and unintentionally) funny. Woods plays a LAPD detective whose idea of communicating with his seven-year-old daughter is sharing sordid tales of his busts. His wife takes exception, the child, and a one-way ticket to San Francisco. Is he sick or merely work obsessed? A call has him fast on the trail of a serial killer. The first mutilated female victim has books on the shelf with titles like The Womb Has Teeth. Another call has him rendezvous with a purveyor of sex parties; she's later found trussed up, blood-spattered and dead. Finally, a diary note leads to a feminist bookshop run by a soured romantic Warren, once gang-raped at the very school Woods attended. Could that be the clue?