Good Cop, Bad Film

by Thomas Willett

11:00pm PST, February 22, 2012

There has always been some fascination in movies to tell stories about corrupt police officers. There is something that captivates audiences about disobedient law enforcers, as if to justify the rise of chaos. In Rampart, Woody Harrelson plays David Brown, an officer in the Los Angeles Rampart district who has had a notorious record of beating suspects in questionable self-defense. When one of these incidents manages to be recorded, will he be fired despite refusal, or will he just continue his path of destruction?

The movie attempts to portray the lead as a stubborn, racist cop who believes that his actions were justified. Other than a few murders, it features a family life with multiple partners and several children. He’s turned off by his daughter’s feminist art and does little to encourage them down healthy roads. There is very little to like about Brown, but it only helps to justify the downward spiral that follows. Even though the events keep getting worse, he plays it cool, thinking that he is right at every moment.

Despite the intriguing premise, the story is set up only to present itself with an ambiguous ending. Director Oren Moverman and writer James Ellroy’s script is full of lively scenes with interesting characters, including a homeless man (Ben Foster) who befriends Brown only to be betrayed. However, the scenes rarely have interesting things to say. Many moments just come across as typical conversations that justify Brown as an unlikable character. This would all be fine if it built to a great conclusion, yet it doesn’t. It’s just a bad cop getting a reality check.

What saves the movie is the performances. As the lead, Harrelson gives a magnetic performance that somehow makes the charges he’s facing seem more sympathetic. He manages to walk the line between overly racist, violent, stubborn, and an overall flawed human very well, and does it with a smutty charm. When things are at their worst with his daughters (Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky), the tone becomes tragic, and Harrelson’s ability to play it with a sense of internal guilt is phenomenal. This movie highlights his abilities as an actor and how he manages to bring a boring story to life. In the end, it isn’t the corruption, but the sense of remorse that makes this character memorable.

The supporting cast all have their moments to shine, even though most are spent fighting against Brown. The best is Foster, whose brief screen time manages to capture life on the streets of Los Angeles in 1999 as brutal without ever addressing it. By playing a tormented homeless man, he captures the chaos that Brown is supposedly preventing. The rest of the characters are mostly presented to show how Brown has affected them, and it’s refreshing to see an outside party.

Other notable performances include Sigourney Weaver as Joan Confrey, who spends the movie trying to figure out ways to fire Brown from the police force. While also brief, it’s in these scenes that Harrelson manages to shine the most with simple taunts. He succeeds at dissecting the media’s obsession of fallen heroes and makes it sound threatening. These few exchanges provide the smallest amount of commentary that this movie tries to infuse about society. It’s captivating, but short lived.

Despite some great performances that create memorable characters, Rampart fails by the hand of its script. Harrelson does his best to make it seem thrilling, but with many anticlimactic moments, there’s very little to elevate this to greatness. It also fails to bring some truth to the initial subject about police brutality and instead focus on a downward spiral. With an unfocused message, the movie ends on an underwhelming level, leaving the viewer wanting some sense of closure. The movie’s biggest flaw is that, like its protagonist, it fails to follow through on a good thing.