Line of Duty is a 2019 thriller about a disgraced cop who finds himself in a race against time to find a kidnap victim.
A fall from grace leaves once acclaimed cop Frank Penny (Aaron Eckhart) back on a beat, hanging out on the street talking to the local kids. Meanwhile, a kidnapper has arranged a ransom pickup, with police Captain Volk (Giancarlo Esposito) planning to catch the guy who has taken his teen daughter Claudia (Nishelle Williams). However, the sting goes bad and the kidnapper in a running panic, killing cops. That puts Penny in the action, and in the confusion, he shoots the suspect, though discovers the wasn’t working alone, that a partner named Dean (Ben McKenzie) has the girl and that there is now 64 minutes before she is murdered. Now on the hunt to find her, Penny finds he’s followed by Ava (Courtney Eaton), a young ‘news’ vlogger who wants to help as long as she gets exclusive rights to the action.
Here’s a movie that begins and ends with Eckhart, a helluva an actor who might not have found the mainstream success he should but continually hammers out one terrific performance after another. Same goes here, where he might not find himself in the strongest material but nevertheless jumps in head first, making this at the very least, entertaining despite the myriad hiccups peppering the rest of it.
Directed by Steven C. Miller, from a screenplay by Jeremy Drysdale, this has a kind of Speed mentality where once we get the characters introduced, it’s run at high speed straight till the end (almost). While that certainly has some potential, the film needlessly populates it with all sorts of silliness, including a number of transparent plot devices that only induce some eyerolls in interrupting some genuinely smart action. Then there’s the pairing of Penny and Ava, which is of course filled with all the expected bantering you expect about old versus new, young and old. It feels like its a subplot to a different movie.
And it’s too bad, because at the heart of this is a powerful story of a broken man trying to gain a foothold out of the hole he’s fallen into, with Eckhart doing everything right and Miller putting together a few really smart action set pieces. Unfortunately, the film is split into too many parts with none of them really finding the right footing, with tropes falling through cracks at every opportunity and contrivances wrung from every corner. Yes, there is some surprising energy to that, but this has way too much in the mix, sapping much of the promise we get in our early commitment to Frank.
Line of Duty ends up a curious and sometimes frustrating battle for tone and relevance, offering us a fascinating character in Penny but feeling hampered by its need to be connected to something trendy. Eaton is a lively young actor, who works hard to give Ava some legitimacy, but the screenplay only makes her feel false, forcing her to say and do things that never truly feel authentic. By the time the story loses its steam in the last act, there’s not much left to keep it working, skidding this to a standstill. Worth it for Eckart, who earns the movie a lot heart, this has some appeal but no longevity.