Cops and Robbers (2020)

Cops and Robbers Review

Cops and Robbers is a 2020 animated short film from Netflix. It’s very mediocre.

This animated short film is inspired by a spoken word poetry video created in response to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. In terms of subject matter, I don’t have any issues with it. Racial injustice can be a powerful subject for the medium of animation as the visuals can even spread that message more potently than live-action. My problem is that the movie is so slight and so short.

It is only around four minutes long, which is ridiculous. The rest is just credits. It felt lazy and uninspired that way. But the contents overall are weak as we just get a couple of famous songs interspersed with the cries for justice and some slogans done in narration that also tries to emulate hip-hop, and that’s pretty much it. Netflix really never should have thought about sending this one to the Academy.

Cops and Robbers is not only short and fleeting, but also uninteresting in its execution and plain mediocre throughout. And I really despise spoken word poetry.

My Rating – 2