Cops

Cops (1922) is one of Buster Keaton's most celebrated silent shorts — eighteen tight minutes you can watch online on iFILM. Co-directed by Keaton and Edward F. Cline, it pits an ordinary unlucky man against what seems like the entire police force of a city, and it never wastes a single frame getting there.

One bad turn leads to another: a borrowed cart, a runaway horse, an accidental disruption of the annual police parade. After that, the chase is on. Keaton constructs the pursuit sequence with the logic of a mechanical puzzle — each gag locks into the next — and the physical precision he brings to every stunt is genuinely astonishing even now. Stream Cops (1922) on iFILM.