Lightstream Pictures, Waypoint Entertainment, The Third Mind Pictures,

Woody Harrelson, Ned Beatty, Francis Capra, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Ice Cube, Brie Larson, Audra McDonald, Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, Robert Wisdom, Robin Wright, Steve Buscemi, Jon Bernthal, Jon Foster, Stella Schnabel

David Brown (Woody Harrelson) is a cop from the infamous Rampart Division of Los Angeles. David is a dirty cop. But he’s a different kind of dirty cop. Very frustrated with the way the law works, he’s not above taking the law into his own hands a little bit and delivering a little self appointed justice out on the street. He’s got some really big character flaws. He’s definitely a racist, and doesn’t try at all to hide it. He’s very egotistical, a serious womanizer, for sure, and has a cruel streak a mile wide. But David is caught on tape delivering a sadistic beating on the victim of an auto crash and finds himself dragged into internal affairs for a closer look.

This film obviously was made to address the problem of racist or sadistic bad guy cops of the LAPD. But it’s not overly preachy or judgemental. I belive it tries to show fairly how a cop can find himself caught in this trap and I belive Woody’s character is not really able to see what’s wrong with what he did.

There are two problems. One is that like many pedophiles or perverts are drawn into certain professions which offer them easy access to vulnerable children, I think many cops are frustrated guys who had no power who are drawn the the badge which gives them the right to get away with murder without any risk of prosecution. The band of brothers protect each other, and they can take it out on vulnerable citizens who are literally afraid of them, and some are drawn to that power I suspect. Additionally it must be extremely frustrating to do your very best day after day to try to clean up the streets and watch the courts turn them back out to do the same thing again because of technicalities and crowded jails. They must constantly be bombarded with idiots who laugh and mock them because they aren’t afraid of being arrested because they know they’ll be back on the street in no time. It must be very tempting to try to teach a lesson to these arrogant jerks. So there are causes and effects that bring things like this to the force.

This film takes a look at that, and David’s frustration at being picked on for doing a good job makes this a pretty interesting film. What he did was not right, but we can kind of understand why he did it.
Woody does a great job of playing the dirty cop who thinks he’s right, and though he’s the star, the rest of the cast does a fine job as well. All in all it’s a little film, not a widely seen one, but one that might be worth another look. It is out of the way, but available on DVD now, and if you like a realistic cop film, this is definitely worth checking out.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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