Cop Game is about a special forces unit in 'Nam that's gone rogue and is killing officers during the last days of the war. Military Police detectives Brent Huff and Max Laurel are called in to find out what's happening, and end up getting a lot more than they bargained for. This either goes all the way to the top, or is somewhere in the middle but is causing issues for the top, but either way, it's not good for anyone. As Huff and Laurel go in deeper they don't know who they can trust, and it doesn't help that the Vietnam War they're living in looks like late '80s Manila. Will they get out alive?
This one was a fun time, but I think it may only qualify as a fun time for people who like these kinds of movies. Like do you get a little thrill if you see Mike Monty or Jim Gaines? Then it's for you. Do you like seeing what name Bruno Mattei will be using instead of his own? Then it's for you. ("Bob Hunter" if you're wondering.) Do you like Brent Huff yelling at people and dressing like he just rolled out of bed? Then it's for you. Once you get past those things, I think the most it has to offer is Mattei not caring how much his movie that's supposed to take place in the closing days of the Vietnam War looks like it took place in 1980s Manila, which adds to the charm when you're watching it in 2026. Also, Tubi has the Severin version, which looks really nice, and while I think there's additional charm in finding an old Japanese VHS with hardcoded subs, my eyesight is getting worse as I get older, so a cleaned up version helps. Maybe not the classic for me that Strike Commando or Robowar is, but how many things are? If you're looking for some Mattei fun to help you forget your troubles for 90 minutes, this will do the trick.
We're now at six movies for Mattei, which is low, but in looking at his IMDb bio, I don't know that we'll get him that much higher, I see maybe four or five other movies of his that we could review. That's okay though, in this case it's quality over quantity, so to speak, because he's made some classics, and while this one isn't quite that for me, it's plenty fun enough. Nines are wild for the three other names people would recognize here, as this is the ninth film for Brent Huff, Mike Monty, and Jim Gaines--who is finally getting tagged on here, not sure why it took so long. Obviously Huff is the star, and while on the surface he looks like he cares as much about his role as Mattei does about anachronisms, as you watch the film you can see him bring it, which is what gets this thing over the goal line and makes it enjoyable. Monty I believe has one blink and you'll miss it scene that's been taken from another movie where he's piloting a helicopter, which isn't much, but enough to get him another tag. And then Gaines is one of a character named Ludge's henchmen (that's his character name, "Ludge's Henchman), who we're going to get into in the next paragraph. It's definitely more than Monty--and was actually newly shot footage!--but still a small part. Either way, we'll take any Gaines we can get.
Back to Ludge, he's in the shot above, holding Huff at gunpoint. He's getting his own paragraph here because his name is Donald Wilson, credited as "Don Wilson." That's right, the same name as DTVC Hall of Famer and one of the greatest to ever do it, Don "The Dragon" Wilson. You may remember a controversy that came up a few years ago where we didn't know how many movies Don "The Dragon" Wilson had been in based on his IMDb bio, and we here had reviewed two films, Siege of Firebase Gloria and Saigon Commandos, that we gave tags to "The Dragon" for, only to discover IMDb took those movies off his bio. That led to a delay in getting that Don Wilson into the 40 Club. I believe Will at Exploding Helicopter had a similar issue, because removing these movies lowered Don "The Dragon's" films with exploding helicopters count. Now we have a face to put with the other Don Wilson, who's now listed on IDMb as "Donald Wilson" to avoid confusion. He's a bit of a Philippines movie mainstay, maybe not at the level of Monty or Gaines, but he's done a good number of films with greats like Mattei and Cirio H. Santiago, so we'll definitely see him again. As far as the confusion goes, this is what happens when we wade in the murky waters of 80s DTV films, combined with relying on the murky waters of a crowdsourced site like IMDb, but we wouldn't have it any other way--actually we would, we'd like to have a reliable way to know exactly how many movies each actor has done!
As much as I've been extolling the virtues of this film, it had its flaws, and not all of them were endearing like Mattei not caring about making the film look more early 70s or more Saigon. First, in our quest to find more Presidential Portraits, Mattei teases us with all these shots of governmental offices, yet sans Presidential Portraits! How am I supposed to take these governmental offices seriously as governmental offices without a Nixon hanging on the wall? And we need a Nixon, we've never gotten one before! One theory is these movies didn't want to platform Nixon based on how bad he was, which is an interesting one. Like in 15 years will movies have Trump portraits? I mean I guess if we go full fascist like it looks like we're going, it might be required to have his portraits in everything by then. Either way, the search for a Nixon continues, with no help from Mattei. He also didn't help our friend Will with any exploding helicopters, but the same way he teased us with multiple governmental offices, he teased us as well with not only multiple helicopters, but helicopters engaged in firefights! Come on Mattei, you didn't have a stock helicopter explosion you could mix in? (And I selfishly wanted that exploding helicopter so I could get my number on his Letterboxd list up.) The only thing we had was the Manila Chinatown, which we'd seen before in Bloodfist, but here we also had the Friendship Arch, plus the novelty that it was supposed to be in Saigon, so I guess you take your wins when you can get them.
Finally, we get a great theme song in this, one of the best parts of the movie actually, but despite that, I had "Head Games" by Foreigner replaced with "Cop Game" in my head. Growing up in the 80s, I know Foreigner is a big deal, but they haven't had a hit in a long time, and I worry that they'll be a victim, if they haven't been already, of this growing trend of kids saying a huge band or artist from the past is "underrated," just because they've never really heard of them. Again, maybe I'm creating a strawman here because I haven't seen anywhere that anyone has said Foreigner is underrated, but they're the kind of act that would be labeled as such by the kids. The worst offender was one my wife told about where a kid said George Michael was underrated. No, he was rated, and a quick check on Wikipedia would tell you that. "Regarded as a pop culture icon, he is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time... [h]e was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. The Radio Academy named him the most played artist on British radio during the period 1984–2004." That's literally in the first paragraph about him, he was never "underrated." For any of you kids reading this, if you have a notion to say "Foreigner is underrated," I also suggest looking them up on Wikipedia, where, again, in the first paragraph, it says: "Foreigner is one of the best-selling bands of all time, with worldwide sales exceeding 80 million records, including 38 million in the US."
And with that, it's probably best that we wrapped this up. If you're into physical media, Severin has a Blu-ray that's on sale as of this writing--and again quotes Ty and Brett's review on the cover. If you want to give it a test run first, the Severin transfer is on Tubi, which maybe doesn't have the charm of hard-coded Japanese subs, but it looks nice. Either way, this is a fun time and worth checking out.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094909
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