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Two young boys, Travis and Harrison, are walking around the prairie being kids and trying out swearwords just for shits and giggles, when they happen upon an abandoned police car. When they find the keys inside, what other choice do a couple of ten-year olds have: they have to take it for a joy ride.

As they are having fun driving the car across the fields, it turns out it wasn’t quite abandoned when the sherrif comes looking for it. And this sherrif (Kevin Bacon) has something to hide so he gets more and more desperate to get his car back… In the meantime the boys are blissfully unaware and play around with the car and the things they find in it – including the sherrif’s guns.

It starts out as a great throwback movie combining a very simple storyline, a 70s feel (including Bacon’s moustache), a slow build-up,  a combination of innocence and  brutality, and only a handful of characters without any background – we only experience the here and now situation. And it almost works really well.

Its shortcoming is that it isn’t quite taut enough to really excel. For instance, when Travis and Harrison start playing with the guns, you suspect nothing much good will come of it of course, but it doesn’t manage to build up real tension. And even though Kevin Bacon’s sherrif may be a dangerous man to anyone who gets in his way, he is never quite menacing enough to get the viewer on the edge of their seat.

I enjoyed it as a throwback darkly comedic thriller, but I can’t quite recommend it as a must-see.

6/10