Hard- charging cop story takes dead aim at the ‘ American way’
Woody Harrelson gives a brilliant performance as a seasoned LAPD officer who pushes the boundaries of morality in the line of duty
We know there are good cops and bad cops, but what about all the cops in between?
Despite the cruiser paint jobs and a hundred years of Hollywood genre, the world of policing is not black and white. Police officers are people, and that means they are fallible, flawed and probably just a little selfish — because no one is perfect.
Not even Dave Brown. A veteran with more than 20 years on the force, Dave ( Woody Harrelson) is the de facto hero in this period cop- drama set against the turmoil of a scandalladen LAPD. The only problem is: Dave is deeply troubled.
Despite his heroic dimensions and his macho exterior, Dave can’t seem to get any part of his life together. He has two ex- wives who just happen to be sisters ( Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche). He also has two kids, one by each mother.
For Dave, this is not a problem. He loves his home life and his two exes. He can drink, carouse, go out, boss around his women and be welcomed home like a Mormon elder. He thinks he’s got it all going on, and for a while, Dave really does appear to have life by the gonads.
This guy seems capable of making his own rules: He harasses female colleagues with an avuncular wink, he beats up perps privately to get valuable information, and he keeps his mouth shut when the big bosses start coming down heavy.
In so many ways, Dave epitomizes the very ideal of frontier justice — and even if we’re only propelled back to the 1990s, this is still the West — and this is still, in many ways, a western.
The central dilemma is the bad guys who saturate the San Fernando Valley. The potential cure is a lawman like Dave, a man capable of taking on the responsibilities that come with the badge — without flinching, or buckling to the book.
Certainly, there’s no doubt that’s how Dave sees himself: A lonesome force of one regulating the ambient chaos with square shoulders and a jutting jaw.
For a while, that’s how we see Dave, too.
Yet, it becomes all too clear, all too quickly, that Dave is a man out of time. His style and approach to law enforcement comes from a different era, and the walls of history are starting to close in.
Director Oren Moverman cleverly keeps Dave’s morality relatively ambiguous for the first half of the film to ensure we stay close to the drama. After all, any time we see a cop fill the frame in an American motion picture, we’re trained to believe we’re looking at the hero. Moverman exploits this assumption with grown- up confidence, then slowly peels away the layers of expectation to show us an arrogant, selfish and ultimately tragic character who rails against his fate with all the grandiosity of a Shakespearean king.
Harrelson is brilliant as this lowbrow King Lear who finds himself in the ash pit of his own ego, and that’s what makes this movie entertaining instead of just plain creepy.
Dave is a fascinating character study that pulls at the strands of male ego, as well as institutional power. At first, we like and respect everything about him because he seems smart, and capable of staying one step ahead of his detractors. We even root for him as he tries to manoeuvre himself into a winning position.
Yet the longer we hold out hope for Dave’s redemption, the more used we feel.
Again, this is one of Moverman’s greatest accomplishments as a director because he suckers us into the genre stereotype before we even have a chance to question the terrain.
By the time we realize we’re cheering for a slime bucket, all the institutional markers have lost their meaning: The uniform, the law, the justice system — it’s all redundant if the man carrying the law tablets is ready to barter his soul.
Those who witnessed the O. J. Simpson investigation and resulting trial will feel the clammy hand of memory rifling through your mental drawers, but Moverman never limits the context to exact examples of bigotry or bad procedure.
Instead, he immerses us in an entire culture of policing through Dave, where the “American way” becomes a hunting blind for male chauvinism and ego- driven violence.
Harrelson is absolutely perfect at every moment, forging a flawed man from a furnace of smouldering dreams and sullied Americana. No matter how dark Dave gets, we can never truly hate him — and that’s thanks to Harrelson’s incredible talents, as well as Moverman’s breadth and depth as a director.
Dave is just a symptom of a disease. Moverman wants us to look beyond his petty frame to see the bigger picture, but he doesn’t oversimplify the facts in order to do so.
Rampart is a sophisticated dissection of the American dream with a lurid, drug- using, sex- addicted, brother in blue standing at its centre.