Review of Cop Land (1997) by Rose É — 03 Mar 2010

*SPOILERS:

This film is PHENOMENAL. The tone and pacing of this film are pitch perfect, and watching it, I couldn't help but be reminded of another of my favorite films, Training Day. However, Cop Land seems a much more mature, sobering take on the topics of police corruption and morality. Stallone's protagonist had me thoroughly engrossed from start to finish. Unlike Training Day, or so many other films featuring a similar set of subjects and themes, here we have a man who's been through it all. He is broken, abandoned, and apathetic. The world he's woken up to find himself mired in has diminished his soul, and so he wanders the beat, tired, dully masking his defeat behind a faded smile. He is on the other side of things. We catch him at his lowest, after he has let the weight of all his days wash over and bury him. And we watch him as he is reborn, as if emerging from a long nightmare.

As the renowned Russian filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk once declared in his adaptation of Tolstoy's Crime and Punishment, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." What this film accomplishes is so much more than just a gritty action flick, or even a character piece, but it truly frames how corruption comes to exist in our lives and how, so often, we allow it in, because this film is not merely about Stallone's virtuous ascent as Freddy, or even Rappaport's irresponsible coward, it is rather a pastiche of life portraits that collide in an ugly, asymmetrical display of evil triumphing. In this film there is no one character chiefly responsible for anything, and to me, that is what makes it interesting and so potent and powerful. This is a film where every character has sinned, and either revelled or languished in the shades of gray society sometimes allows. The slow burn of the film allows these grays to dissolve, and you start to see the different elements involved in the process. And you realize by the end that the only reason the film even has a protagonist at all is because in this all too realistic portrayal of the world we live in, the ideal is what keeps things in balance, and the ideal is something we have to fight for.

Stallone's Freddy is not particularly stunning or remarkable. There is nothing extraordinary about him that would immediately classify him as a "hero". He is not even an anti-hero. He's just a man. And he exists in a world of complacency, and as time goes on, he comes to that inevitable crossroad as we all so often do where something must be done and he does it.

Technically speaking I enjoyed the film's pace a lot. It was focused and I never got the sense I was being rushed along or conned into a plot point. As for the acting....all I can really say is "wow". Every actor here brought more than enough to the table. Stallone's performance was great. One of the little nuances I appreciated about his performance here was his perpetual smile throughout most of the first half. You never quite buy the smile because it always sometimes looks like some ornament he puts on against the world, like his badge, yet the sorrow is written all over his face. Stallone is actually a very underrated actor (as this movie expertly displays) and he's actually quite intelligent, so to see him play this dumbed down, meek shell of a man was an interesting portrayal. I'd also like to applaud the writing. This script must have been quite a juggling act, but nothing ever feels off balance and the characters are all developed to their boiling point. I really have nothing bad to say about this film at all. Bravo.