The script when focused on Woody Harrelson's "Dan Brown" is top notch from crime writer James Ellroy and director Moverman. Unfortunately the characters on the sidelines are mostly cyphers and undeveloped. Though spellbound by the powerhouse performance by Harrelson one can't help but want to know more about the character's family, the investigation/conspiracy? against him and most of the fragile Robin Wright.
I initially condemned "Rampart" as an ugly mess, but after soldiering through this bleak and affecting meditation on evil a second time, I've found a brilliant film that is in fact superior to Moverman's "The Messenger." This is a scathing movie that effortlessly draws up empathy and disgust (often at the same time) for captivatingly real characters as repulsive as they are pitiful. The minimal violence is awkward and ugly. There is no final plot twist, no realization, no redemption. "Rampart" is simply a complicated portrait of a complicated man, handled beautifully. It's everything noir wasn't meant to be, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Rampart's noteworthy in only featuring Woody Harrelson, the film itself is a slog. Rampart's use of choppy editing, documentarian-like narrative and obnoxious characters make it difficult to watch more than once. There is a reason Rampart has become lost and forgotten: not because it is an indie production but more due to it not being as bold with it's concept and setting as it suggests. Watch Bad Lieutenant instead.
occasionally effective, occasionally pretentious character study about an authoritarian cop on his way up shit creek. any movie that breaks the vigilante spell of the cop-renegade genre is fine by me, and the 90's mise-en-scene (complete with ice cube cameo) is a welcome return to a moment when people resented authority. but the glance is also nostalgic - like the film itself, with its scorcese-ish aspirations.
An artful look at the Rampart scandal of the 1990s in Los Angeles. Woody Harrelson does a fantastic job playing the angry, frustrated, alcohol-fueled police officer at the centre of the scandal. The style is split between documentary-like coverage and wide static shots of sun-scorched LA. Echoes of "Bad Lieutenant" aside, this film is meditative and destructive - but, it would have been nice to receive more answers.
"you don't turn into a mongoloid" Harrelson as great corrupt asshole police-officer... but the movie was lame.
Harrelson is great but the film as a whole is as boring as hell.watch Prince of the city instead
Muddled verisimilitude ignores story, drunk nuance/innuendo undermines otherwise fine portrait of dysfunctionalism. Dir Moverman misses the importance of clear, delineable plot mechanics, tries too hard to match momentum of recent character pics Wrestler, Fighter, Crazy Heart. They understood you must end up somewhere in order for journey to not be about the journey. Watchable, if not memorable ok detour into ruin.
It's one thing to make comparisons to "The Wrestler" or "Crazy Heart," but it's a little nuts to suggest the filmmaker was trying "too hard" to match those flicks' momentum. They don't actually have a whole hell of a lot in common. They don't even have similar goals, thematically or otherwise.
Hey, yeah, I see your point. Momentum as in the beauty and efficiency of simplicity, momentum as in a clear line of sight with a beginning, middle and end that informs as much as it takes us somewhere for a little while. The goal of all stories whether they are about an aging brute and busted father down on the road of glory given one last shot at the greatness of a personal relationship with his soul, or a has been wanna be again singer and liver of the golden rule of celebritydom - that it is better to have shined and lost the glow of popularity than to have burned out before your greatest personal best. Precisely my point - they don't have similar goals which is why the films I listed succeed in ways Rampart fails. Rampart leaves us busted and bruised and unrewarded for having invested in the journey and consequently disappointed. It's not about idealism or even happy endings but an ending that fits the mood and tone of the story and gives us a place to land and take off from. Rampart says I came I saw and I have but one single solitary end up ahead. You simply cannot end a film with but a single choice for your character. You can and it happens all the time but it's miserable and short sighted and uninspired. Life is a multi colored, many splendid thing with barbs and jagged edges that reward and wound without remorse or explanation. Why not portray such universal possibility in a film that strives for so much verisimilitude? Thanks for your thoughts, see ya around the Mubi.
In Moverman's portrait of the broken American system of 'order,' he's depicted the worst kind of racial/bigoted/chauvinist reactionism, in which violence is not the worst element -it's the intelligent observation and regurgitation of legal and cultural loopholes that enables self-inflicted blindness. Dave Brown becomes the close-minded American's fear that the country has indeed been surrendered to dirty "diversity."
I wanted to like it so much more than I did. Love Ellroy, love the performances. I thought it looked fantastic, but the camera lingered in strange places. Sort of an uncompromising end, which threw me, but will stay with me. Harrelson was no holds barred, his rapport with Ned Beatty top notch. A strange cop movie.
I'd shoot that many people too if I had Anne Heche and that chick from Sex & The City as my WIVES. And they're supposed to be sisters? Fuck. I'd kill everyone in LA.
Harrelson does a 'Bad Lieutenant' in what starts out as a fairly straight-forward cop-off-the-rails and slowly morphs into a deeper and pretty disturbing portrait of mental illness and the social decay of the time. Harrelson is fantastic and the story moves along well. The look, shot on Arri Alexa feels a little mismatched in parts and for me there was still a little something missing by the end. 3 stars
A tragic, tense, beautifully-made film about a rogue cop in late-90s LA. Woody Harrelson gives an outstanding performance as the intelligent yet deeply troubled detective who's hard to like but (almost) impossible not sympathise with as his life careens out of control. The pacing, direction, music and particularly the cinematography are incredibly well done. On my list of the best films of 2011.
[Spolier] Harrelson is very convincing as a man longing to recapture an innocence he has forgotten, finally shut out in the same neon-lit world as Travis Bickle. I think the film makes clear that the sporadic, violent catharses Brown has achieved in his job cannot alleviate the rage that finally threatens to consume him as the film closes; the film is to me more effective because of a lack of overt finale violence.
Oren Moverman's sophomore effort is a stark, sometimes inscrutable record of LA cop Dave Brown's meltdown. Co-written by James Ellroy, the pitch-black irony and socio-political subtext of the story's place and time (Los Angeles, 1999) adds an extra tension to the elliptical structure. Bobby Bukowski's bold cinematography, the edgy editing and sound design also help to transcend the petty label of "an American indie."
Woody Harrelson is excellent in this otherwise rather dry film about a racist policeman whose brutal tactics finally land him in serious trouble, leading him to re-examine his life. Atmospheric, but kind of aimless, and not quite as deep as it thinks it is despite some fine performances.
