R, 1 hr. 47 min. Directed By:
Oren Moverman. Release Date: Feb 10, 2012.
DVD Release Date: May 15, 2012.
I grew up, well, not in LA, but LA adjacent. I haven’t lived there since I was 14, but I
still think of that great sprawl of people home. I go back whenever I can, although it’s been
a very, very long time since I was able to go back. In all those years in LA, and I lived in
California for another eight before finally leaving, although hopefully not for
good, I never once heard of the Ramparts until just a few years ago. I recognize it’s an area deep in metro LA, nowhere
near any of the burbs where the chosen ones live, and not far enough west to be
desirable for gentrification.
A few years ago there was a scandal involving the
Rampart Division of the LAPD. I don’t
know a whole lot of details, but I know it’s a repeated discussion between Milo
Sturgis and Alex Delaware in the Alex Delaware mysteries, by Jonathan
Kellerman. What I can’t tell by the
discussion and the strangely anachronistic stories, is WHEN this scandal
happened. Rampart, the movie, doesn’t help clear that up for me, either.
Rampart
is
an unusual movie, primarily because Woody Harrelson got high praise for his
portrayal of the violent, racist police officer who used his badge to commit
multiple legal murders, while the movie seems to have not been all that favored
at the box office. Critics seem more or
less okay with it, fans much less so.
There’s a reason: this is film as
art. It’s all about pain and suffering,
and that never does well at the box office.
It’s an ugly story of an ugly time, and I’m not sure that anyone bothers
with niceties like fairness. The Rampart
Division is painted with a wide brush, and even when characters that appear
that cannot be painted like that, dialogue is in place to force them into line.
This is one of those movies that underlines why I
have two scoring systems and come up with an aggregate between them. It’s not just Woody Harrelson who is
outstanding in this movie. There are
more than a few better than average performances, and even the weaker ones seem
to work within the framework of the story.
The story is tight and rings with truth, even if it’s just a little bit
of truth. But, this isn’t a movie that’s
going to make you smile at the end.
There’s not really a happy (or even a satisfying) ending. I wasn’t glad, after having hit the stop button
on my remote, that I’d watched this, and I didn’t feel like my life had been
improved in the two hours I spent with Woody, his family, his coworkers, his
victims, and the people trying to prosecute him.
