Cop Land (1997)

reviewed by
Scott Renshaw


COP LAND (Miramax) Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, Michael Rapaport, Annabella Sciorra, Robert Patrick, Peter Berg. Screenplay: James Mangold. Producers: Cary Woods, Cathy Konrad and Ezra Swerdlow. Director: James Mangold. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, brief nudity) Running Time: 103 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

At the age of 50, Sylvester Stallone made a bold career move. After spending more than a decade making mega-millions for carrying flimsy films on his broad shoulders, Stallone realized that he wasn't getting any younger. So he lobbied writer/director James Mangold for the lead role in COP LAND, Mangold's gritty drama about a small New Jersey town populated almost entirely by corrupt New York City cops. He gained almost thirty pounds for his role as affable Sheriff Freddy Heflin, and worked for bargain basement wages. He joined a cast of heavyweights like Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel which would push him to his creative limits. At the age of 50, Sylvester Stallone decided to take up acting.

In one sense, it was a brilliant decision. Freddy Heflin is easily Stallone's best role since the one Stallone wrote for himself 20 years ago -- one Rocky Balboa -- and Stallone does some wonderful work with it. His heavy-lidded gaze and crooked half-smile are ideal for Heflin, a good-natured figurehead sheriff whose job is to wear a badge and stay out of the way of the locals. It's the only law enforcement job Freddy can get thanks to a hearing loss suffered as a teenager while rescuing a drowning girl, and he feels resigned to accepting it for what it is. That is before Internal Affairs officer Moe Tilden (DeNiro), investigating the mysterious "death" of a young cop (Michael Rapaport) involved in a suspicious shooting, pricks Freddy's pride by pointing out all the graft going on under his nose. With minimal theatrics, Stallone shows us a man who never wanted anything more than to be a cop finally deciding to be one of the good guys.

With such solid potential in that story -- and such a talented cast of co-stars -- I'm sure the last thing Stallone expected was that he would have to carry COP LAND the same way he carried his formula action films. Yet that is exactly what he has to do, because Mangold has written only one real character in COP LAND, and provided only one real conflict. He introduces no complexity into the issue of cops on the take, reducing the characters played by Keitel and Robert Patrick to one-dimensional villains. Crucial relationships are woefully underdeveloped, notably that between Stallone and Annabella Sciorra (as the girl Freddy once saved, now grown and married to one of the dirty cops). Even DeNiro gets little to work with and does even less with it, playing the short-fused I.A. man like every short-fused movie cop cliche rolled into one. Only Ray Liotta, as a coke-addicted cop trying to go straight, offers any genuine support to Stallone. Every event not directly related to Freddy feels trite and perfunctory; every scene is given the most obvious spin.

Actors make choices like the one Stallone made with COP LAND because they believe that the film is going to get noticed, that it could do for them what PULP FICTION did for John Travolta and Bruce Willis. Stallone deserves to get noticed for his work in COP LAND, work which reminds us that Stallone became a star because he brought humanity to a sympathetic underdog. Whether COP LAND will get noticed is another matter. James Mangold went searching for an urban epic in COP LAND, but he didn't find one. He just found one great character. It's the kind of character people revise their career plans for, the kind of role which can make a movie star want to be an actor.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 pleased cops:  6.

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