Cop Land

This movie was always going to be interesting because it involves so many sides to the one story. There is an excellent balance established between all the factions involved in the case of a missing/dead police officer.

The characters for this sort of movie are very original, and their flaws are revealed just as much, if not more so than their strengths. This has to be Sylvester Stallone's career highlight, and goes to show that his talents are not necessarily best for action movies. And De Niro's understated but excellently played "Moe Tilden" leaves you wishing he was featured more. The scenes between these two characters are worth the viewing alone. Harvey Keitel as well, plays an excellent cop/quasi-crime boss.

It's a little soppy at times but overall a stand-out in it's genre.

Freddie Heflin is a sheriff in a New Jersey suburb mainly populated by NYPD cops seeking a break from the big city. Freddie lives in awe of the cops, unable to join due to deafness in one ear. However he is forced to confront Donlan and his colleagues when an IA officer Tilden begins to investigate the killing of two unarmed black men by, and subsequent suicide of Donlan's nephew Murray Babitch.

This `independent' thriller boast a deep cast and certainly had a lot to shout about in the run up to it's release. The problem is with the actual story that the film has to work with. The start is exciting with Babitch's killing of two black motorists but it is also quite stretched. Similarly the denouncement is exciting but is quite easy to see it coming. However the middle section is good, as it relies on the characters and the actors to develop the story - although there is probably too much history to squeeze into a short time.

Stallone proves that he can act, being excellent in a particularly unglamorous role, carrying extra weight for the part and looking like he took lessons from De Niro. The rest of the cast would find it hard to be bad - De Niro and Harvey Keitel rekindle their Scorsese partnership and both are good here. Liotta, Rapaport, Patrick and Sciorra are all excellent in smaller roles. Even small roles are played by heavyweights - Emmerich, Moriarty, Spencer, Vincent and Garofalo (who only seems to have 2 scenes!)

Overall the film benefits from a fantastic cast but needed a much stronger plot to justify the depth of the performances.

In their only joint film Sylvester Stallone and Robert DeNiro star in Cop Land, a story about Garrison, New Jersey a small town where an overabundance of NYPD officers reside. So much so that the place is called Cop Land and they have the run of the place.

As the official law in Cop Land the boys in blue have selected a wannabe. Sylvester Stallone who lost the hearing in one ear saving a drowning woman Annabella Sciorra is the police chief. Other than rescuing cats and issuing speeding tickets, but never to the NYPD residents of his town all Stallone does is stand in awe of the people who have the career he wanted.

This whole set up comes tumbling down during a shootout at the George Washington Bridge where Michael Rappaport shoots two black teens, two stupid ones I might add who point something at him he mistakes for an automatic weapon. The NYPD citizens of Cop Land do what they can to cover up the incident, but it all blows up in their faces.

Robert DeNiro who is an internal affairs detective has been looking into the cop residents of Garrison for some time. He tries to recruit Stallone, but Stallone has to see for himself what his 'friends' are really like.

Stallone does one of the best acting jobs in his career. He most assuredly is not playing super hero Rambo or even working class hero Rocky in this. He's a flawed man physically and emotionally and the Garrison NYPD colony don't take him seriously at all. That's part of their downfall.

Besides those already mentioned I would single out Harvey Keitel as the unofficial head of the Garrison cop colony. The more the story unfolds the more frightening Keitel becomes. Cathy Moriarty-Gentile as Keitel's abused wife, Ray Liotta who develops a conscience about what is going on and Frank Vincent as the police union head who is the ultimate target in the Cop Land probe from Internal Affairs.

But it's Stallone who is the real revelation here. It's a different Sly than fans of Rocky and Rambo know.

Many people see Silvester Stallone as just another action movie hero who can't do anything but that. However, unlike other action movie stars, (Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Seigal etc..) Stallone made his breakthrough with a movie that wasn't really an action movie at heart. He gave forth an excellent performance in Rocky and set a standard for himself that just seemed to fall and fall as his career progressed. He starred in cheesy action movie role after cheesy action movie role until finally people began associating him with nothing but that. Now finally, over twenty years after Rocky, Stallone comes back and shows people that he can be more than an action hero if he wants to. Stallone's performance in Cop Land shows vulnerability, anger, admiration, fear and many other emotions that were rarely present in any of his movie except Rocky. I'm sorry to say that I was one of the many people who took Cop Land for granted when it came to theaters simply because I didn't believe Stallone could do anything but cheesy action movies. Today, I finally rented it out of pure curiosity and was shocked at how far I was from the truth.

Cop Land is a very well made film about a small town that corrupt New York City cops have made their haven. Stallone plays the sheriff of the town, Freddy Heflin, who wanted to be NYPD but couldn't due to a hearing disorder. When Murray 'Superboy' Babitch (Michael Rapaport) shoots and kills two drugged up teenagers when he mistakes a steering wheel club for a gun in a high speed chase, his friends come in to help him. But their far-fetched plan starts to come down on them when Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) from Internal Affairs begins investigating Superboy's alleged suicide. Things begin to go seriously wrong from here and Freddy is caught right in the middle. I thought that Stallone would have been upstaged by all his great co-stars like Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro, but I was wrong. Stallone comes out perfectly as an aging cop with smashed dreams faced with a moral dilemma he doesn't know how to solve. In many ways he idolizes these big time New York cops but he knows that many of the things they do are wrong. In many ways Stallone's performance is far superior to that of his co-stars as he exhibits more depth and character development than any of them.

Cop Land is a somewhat unknown gem that many people overlooked for the wrong reasons. If you have any interest in the genre I would highly recommend it. Cop Land is probably the second best police murder/crime drama I've seen, only behind L.A. Confidential. At times the story has something to be desired and unlike L.A. Confidential is drags in some parts but the fantastic performances by every cast member more than make up for these minor flaws. I give Cop Land 8 stars out of 10.

Cop Land is written and directed by James Mangold with an ensemble cast featuring Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Robert Patrick, Peter Berg, and Michael Rapaport. Distributed by Miramax Films it features a musical score by Howard Shore.

Freddy Heflin (Stallone) is the sheriff of Garrison, New Jersey. A small satellite town across the river from the Big Apple where many of the big city cops reside. Freddy always wanted to be a big city cop but due to partial deafness was unable to make the grade. But when a hero white cop shoots dead two black youths it sets off a series of events that make Freddy realise that the big city cops in Garrison aren't as honest as he is. Thus Freddy must decide if he should get involved.

It was heralded as the film to break Stallone on to the A list of serious actors, and the film where a fine ensemble had gathered and worked for a basic scale wage-such was their faith in the material. Yet in spite of making a considerable profit at the box office and receiving generally favourable reviews, Cop Land seemed to vanish without trace before it could make its mark in the cop/drama genre. A lot of that can probably be put down to the sheer weight of expectation, considering the cast involved, for something out of the top draw. However, revisiting the film now, over ten years post its release, Mangold's movie shows itself to be the tight and intelligent picture it is.

From the off it's evident that there's very little good about the town of Garrison. The coppers drink and drive, cheat on their partners and the sheriff looks like an out of work, overweight slob. Mangold clearly is more about the bleak than the beautiful. As the narrative and characterisations move forward, a multitude of strands start to dangle on the screen-where it at first appears a bit too chocked-but ultimately unfolds with ease as the story progresses. Here's where Cop Land excels, it could so easily have just been another good cop/bad cop movie, one where the doofus partially afflicted guy saves the day. But Cop Land is more intimate in detail of its characters, intimacy that is boosted by a pretty flawless cast (notably Stallone & Liotta). There's healthy helpings of action and drama, but it's the dialogue driven confrontations that entertain the most; where we get the pleasure of watching acting heavyweights battle for supremacy.

With a slow burn sense of doom hanging over it from the off, Cop Land very much feels like a throwback to the adult westerns and film noirs from the 1950s. There's nothing wrong with that of course, in fact it's a compliment. But this deserves its own little niche, that of the contemporary crime thriller with urban western overtones. A damn fine film with a great thoughtful script, that is acted accordingly and directed without flab and pointless filler. 8/10