director/screenwriter
James Mangold
producers
Cathy Konrad
Ezra Swerdlow
Cary Woods
cinematographer
Eric Edwards
music
Howard Shore
editor
Craig McKay
cast
Sylvester Stallone (Freddy Heflin)
Harvey Keitel (Ray Donlan)
Ray Liotta (Gary 'Figgsy' Figgis)
Robert De Niro (Moe Tilden)
Peter Berg (Joey Randone)
Janeane Garofalo (Cindy Bretts)
Robert Patrick (Jack Duffy)
Michael Rapaport (Murray Babitch)
Annabella Sciorra (Liz Randone)
Noah Emmerich (Deputy Bill Geisler)
Cathy Moriarty (Rose Donlan)
John Spencer (Leo Crasky)
Frank Vincent (Vincent Lassaro)
Edie Falco (Berta)
Debbie Harry (Delores)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 104m
u.s.
release: 8/15/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other james
mangold films
reviewed on this website:
- girl,
interrupted
- identity
- walk
the line
|
If
you put Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, and John Sayles together
in a room and told them to come up with a modern suburban Western,
the result might be Cop Land. The sophomore effort of
writer-director James Mangold (whose debut was last year's Heavy),
Cop Land has the cast of a Scorsese film, the muckraking
police-corruption plot of a Lumet film, and the leisurely pace
and character focus of a Sayles film. If you admire those directors
(as I do), you might enjoy the movie enough to see it twice (as
I did). Be warned, though, that Mangold duplicates those filmmakers'
flaws, too.
The film is set in the fictional Garrison, New Jersey, a town
populated almost entirely by New York cops (Mangold based it
on the real-life New York suburb of Orange County). A quote by
Juvenal comes to mind: "Who watches the watchmen?"
Well, the town is officially policed by sheriff Freddy Heflin
(Sylvester Stallone), who lost his hearing in one ear while saving
a woman from drowning; that prevented him from becoming a "real"
cop in the big city. But Garrison is unofficially owned and operated
by Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel), a mob-connected cop who colonized
Garrison as a dirty cop's paradise and installed the harmless
sad sack Freddy as its peacekeeper.
Stallone, who gained 40 pounds for his role, uses his new physical
awkwardness and insecurity around "real" actors to
convey Freddy's self-hating shame around "real" cops.
It's a touching performance with barely a hint of aggression.
Nobody in Garrison takes Freddy seriously, least of all Freddy
himself. Denied a true cop's life by one moment of heroism, Freddy
is now too frightened to stick his head out of his shell (note
the stuffed turtle Mangold plants). But a blatant instance of
police corruption -- an accidental and possibly racially motivated
double killing, and the subsequent cover-up -- might be enough
to jolt Freddy out of his passive funk.
I sympathize with some of the criticism of Cop Land: There's
too much plot and too many characters, and the film needed to
be either streamlined or lengthened. At times, it's like three
episodes of NYPD Blue jammed together and whittled down
to feature length. Some of the best actors suffer from the plot
overload; Janeane Garofalo, as Freddy's deputy, has a hard, flat
way of saying "Hey, that's not necessary" to a cop
who's just called her "cupcake," but that's all she
does that I remember even after my second viewing.
Some other actors, though, take advantage of the script's series
of confrontations and grandstanding. Robert De Niro, looking
like Rupert Pupkin ten years later, is sour-faced and funny as
the Internal Affairs cop who's out to nab Keitel. Ray Liotta,
in the stand-out performance as a conflicted cop, has an easy
and almost gentle rapport with Stallone; Liotta's bitter city
cop acts like Freddy's protective older brother. What lured me
back to Cop Land again were these performances and the
film's aching, authentic tone of regret. Stallone, who has wasted
far too many years in meaningless action and unfunny comedies,
may understand all too well Freddy's pain at the path not taken.
Freddy proves himself in the end; Stallone proves himself long
before that. |
