Rampart

   To say that I was excited when my friend invited me to join him at a screening of Rampart would be a vast understatement.  For months I've been hearing about Woody Harrelson's career performance as a corrupt L.A. cop in this gritty introspective drama.  Since it still has a very limited release in the United States, I was even more excited to get a look at this much-hyped movie here in Philadelphia.
  I will start by saying that I was mentally and emotionally taken out of this film every three or four minutes because I was surrounded by a tremendously annoying and discourteous audience.  And the major players seemed to all be seated in a two-row radius around us.  A man suffering from a persistent cough that could only be described as a deadly mix of pneumonia and emphysema; a caricature of a human being with an extremely loud laugh intended solely to inform everyone in earshot (which must have extended out into the concession area) that he was witty enough to pick up on the irony of the joke on screen; an aging woman wielding a cane who was seated directly in the center of a row near the front of the theater got up and left with the help of her husband about an hour and ten minutes into the film - which is fine, but as she was forcing everyone to her left to make room for her to get through, she was loudly apologizing and begging for forgiveness, which only made things more distracting; a middle-aged man's cell phone rang, prompting him to frantically search through the pockets of what seemed to be a caribou parka - he was ultimately unable to locate the phone and it went to voice mail.   Having said all of that, I thought the movie was great.
   Harrelson plays Dave Brown, an LAPD officer who lives and works by his own rules.  Brown has a long history of corruption, ranging from something as seemingly innocent as drinking on the job to the alleged murder of a date rapist about a decade before the film takes place.  The film opens with Brown serving as mentor and teacher to a female rookie cop who seems no older than 20.  Minutes before using brutal force to get information from a drug dealer, Brown tells the rookie that everything she has read in the academy handbook is complete bullshit.  We are quickly introduced to Dave Brown's world and given a fair taste of what he is willing to do in the name of justice.
  Brown is twice-divorced, to sisters, and has a child with each of them, making the children both half-sisters and cousins at the same time.  His relationships with the two ex-wives are made even more uncomfortable for us to watch when we discover that they all live together in a twisted web of dysfunction.  Brown clearly loves his daughters but has a difficult time showing it.  In fact, he has a difficult time dealing with every emotion that life has to offer.  Except anger.
  At times, Brown seems like the coolest cop I've ever seen on screen.  Most of the time, however, he is utterly pathetic and unlikeable.  He is a tragic character with flaws that run deep.  The film focuses on two incidents of violence: the first is a brutal beating that is caught on video and spread across news media; the second is the murder of two stick-up men after they attempt to rob a high-stakes card game.  It is the latter that Brown has a difficult time justifying.
  As the LAPD and FBI investigate the double murder, Brown's life spirals, and I mean spirals, out of control.  He loses his kids, his once-meaningful relationships with their mothers, his house, his friendship with a long-time friend and confidant, and most intriguingly, his sanity.  Brown's struggle to survive the storm is compelling on screen.  Director Oren Moverman (The Messenger) works with shaky cameras, quick scene-ending cuts, circling shots at conference tables, and other effects to enhance the tone of his scenes.  I can see how some would say that his style is gimmicky and heavy-handed, as if to say "Hey everybody, look how interesting and gritty I can make this look," but it worked for me.  I felt that it paralleled Brown's self-destruction and manic-depressive lifestyle.  The camera effects during a scene at a nightclub are particularly well done.  Rampart looks like every episode of The Shield, which, for me, is a very good thing.  I typed in the title of this film into IMDB.com and discovered that The Shield's working title was Rampart.  Although I am not certain, I would bet that the connections run even deeper than that.
   Harrelson is perfect in this role.  He is concurrently believable as a physically-imposing badass cop and as a desperate father who is watching his girls slip away.  Rage fills almost every facet of his life except with how he deals with his family.  In one particularly poignant scene where his family is finally kicking him out of the house, I was shocked that Brown didn't resort to violence to escape the situation.  Harrelson is very good at using his various tools as an actor to convey the many sides to Dave Brown.  He is brilliant with his usage of rhetoric while under interrogation by his superior officers.  I was buying that Brown possesses a vast mental catalog of court rulings and legal precedents that enable him to navigate his way through the department's official inquiries.  Conversely, I was also buying him as a man incapable of dealing with hardship without the aid of cigarettes, pills and alcohol.  The character would be, as my friend said, a perfect study for someone with a psychology degree. 
  Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Ned Beatty, Ice Cube, Ben Foster, Anne Heche and Steve Buscemi all have small roles, but do not misunderstand - this is the Woody Harrelson show.  And despite the prevailing circumstances that surrounded me in the theater, I was able to come away with a very positive opinion of this movie.