Part of the No Rewatch November 2012 Project.

I wanted to do something I hardly ever do, which is write a second review of a movie because something happened that I wasn't prepared for. I found, having let a day or so pass, that Rampart left something inside of me. It was quiet but dense and I'm not sure how to explain it.

What I can say is that it hasn't gone away. I just keep finding myself sitting in a stiff silence wandering through this movie in my mind. There's nothing specific about it that's coming to me. I haven't reached any new insights or discovered some new cavern of greatness inside of it, but it's still there. And…

Aside from some actually quite good camerawork, this essentially relies on the cast to carry it forward. And by the cast, I mainly mean Woody Harrelson. His performance as a corrupt cop slowly coming to terms with a career of cover-ups, bribery and general misdeeds is simply brilliant, switching between stoic, unfazed, brutal and emotional with ease. Likewise the supporting cast, especially Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon as Harrelson's ex-wives, is also pretty decent and the script gives you some dialogue that isn't all that bad as well.

So why only three and a half stars? The pacing. For a film with an hour and 40 minute run time, it feels like it goes on for a hell of a…

Part of the No Rewatch November 2012 Project.

My love of Woody Harrelson is mostly irrational. Other than a few impossible-to-hate performances like Zombieland, White Men Can't Jump, and Cheers, he's never been a particularly exceptional actor. Even so, you won't find me apologizing for it. Between two movies I know absolutely nothing about where one has Woody and one doesn't, I'll generally grab the one he's in. That's how I came up on Rampart.

It wasn't long before I knew I wasn't in for much. The first fifteen minutes were a giant mish-mash of cliche and boredom. This total absence of originality takes talent. Just not the kind of talent I'm usually looking for in a movie.

This is…

Woody Harrelson stars an old-school and corrupt LA police officer who is marginalised and isolated by both his superiors and complicated personal life. In the past ten years we have seen a number of films exploring dirty and misanthropic officers trying to work the system to their own advantage. What separates Rampart is that, whilst he is just as bad and brutal as his cinematic cousins (perhaps even more so), he is fully aware that he is constantly sinking.

Harrelson delivers his best performance in years. He is a chain smoking, articulate and volatile figure that is on the brink of blowing at any moment. He consumes the film because he is the film. He is in every scene to…

Title: Rampart (2011)
BD-25 Single-Layer Disc
Video: 1080p / AVC
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Subtitles: English SDH and Spanish
Run time: 108 minutes
Studio: Millenium Media
Rating: R
Region Coding: Region A Locked

Woody Harrelson as David Douglas Brown
Cynthia Nixon as Barbara
Anne Heche as Catherine
Brie Larson as Helen
Sammy Boyarsky as Margaret
Steve Buscemi as Bill Blago
Sigourney Weaver as Joan Confrey
Robin Wright as Linda Fentress
Ned Beatty as Hartshorn
Ice Cube as Kyle Timkins
Directed by Oren Moverman

Moverman introduced himself with his first feature film The Messenger in 2009, which had an interesting and believable plot with some fantastic performances from Foster and Harrelson. His second film Rampart is a…

I've got to admit I bought this movie because I think Woody Harrelson is a gem and this is one of those flicks that feels like it's probably been immensely underrated. Upon viewing, I only hold one of those preconceptions. Woody Harrelson is in fact still a gem.

One thing that Rampart does and it does very well, is really dig deep into it's characters and let it's viewers divulge in their psyche. It didn't take me 30 minutes to know how every character and felt toward Harrelson's ultra corrupt, brutal and womanising L.A cop. Harrelson kept the film in motion, even if it moved at an unbelievably slow pace.

The script was good, with some great dialogue and the…

This was a hard film to watch, mostly because Harrelson is so damn unlikable. He just makes for the worst corrupt cop ever and he just keeps making horrible move after horrible move, and never seems to have any remorse for his actions. He is clearly a crap father and their is a scene where he claims he has never hurt his daughters, emotionally, and they basically walk away in tears. He has no idea what a crap person he is.

Add in this film had a fantastic cast and really pissed it away in my opinion. Ice Cube's subplot goes nowhere, actors like Bernthal and Buscemi are blips in the film...in fact I had to rewatch some of the…

Dave ‘Date Rapist’ Brown has and Badge, an indiscriminate misanthropy for any group of people you can name and a nickname straight out of the inbetweeners. He’s a cross between Henry Chinaski and the Bad Lieutenant. He’s a legacy cop, his father being a legend of the LAPD in the bad old days of corruption and brutality and ‘date rapist’ is keen to do daddy proud. Brown is the last standard bearer of a dying breed at a time when the media spotlight is shining bright on police corruption.

The plot is surprisingly simple given that the film comes from the typewriter James Ellroy, legendary chronicler of the history of LA policing through his mammoth labyrinthine novels. What we have…