James Ellroy's "Blood on the Moon" (1984)

“If his seventeen years as a policeman had taught him anything, it was that your expectations diminished as you realized how thoroughly fucked-up the bulk of humanity was, and that you had to go on a hundred seemingly contradictory discourses to keep the major dreams alive”.

Now, if only James A. Harris had kept this crucial description in mind for COP (1988), his adaptation of James Ellroy's "Blood on the Moon" -- the book that would introduce the run-ragged, womanizing, generally all-around fascist detective sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, a character that would further be the subject of Ellroy's pen for two other rousing criminal manhunts, "Because The Night" and "Suicide Hill" -- his film would be better by tenfold.