Happy Women’s History Month, ladies. Celebrate with a sacrificial lamb on a spit, a chauvinistic jerk by the nickname “Date Rape,” played brilliantly by Woody Harrelson in the 2011 film Rampart, opening in limited release today. He’s offered up as a fallen hero representing the most loathsome of men and dirty cops.
Script-wise, if you prefer a full-on blowtorch over a simmer in your character portrayals, you’ll get some gratification from Harrelson’s going-down-in-flames Dave Brown in Rampart. Those who are a little more discerning about storytelling and believe that you can indeed create an interesting lead from the most abhorrent of villains — as in Bardem’s creepy serial killer in Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men — will feel like we could have gotten a bit more out of this brutal odyssey, especially given the utterly dazzling cast and crew.
“Munch, munch cowgirl,” Brown tells a rookie female cop (Stella Schnabel) at the beginning of the film, offended by the fact that she chooses not to eat all of her french fries. The harassing insult is among a handful of offensively quotable lines and a showcase of two of the film’s undeniable strengths: its dialogue and well crafted, intimate moments.
(Other one liners include “She’s blonde all over,” and “Can we not go to Vietnam today?” posed by Sigourney Weaver’s police attorney Joan Confrey, one of the few women who don’t buy into Brown’s idiotically conceived war-hero rogue cop persona.)
Too bad that Confrey and Schnabel’s rookie don’t get developed further. Nor do many of the other great characters in the film, like Brown’s bad-influence dad, Ned Beatty, internal affairs officer Ice Cube, the sister ex-wives played by Cynthia Nixon and Ann Heche, the conflicted seductress-slash-attorney Robin Wright, and most notably the wheelchair-bound junkie informant Ben Foster, who co-starred with Harrelson in director Oren Moverman’s previous film, The Messenger — a far superior film about soldiers who deliver bad news to the families of war casualties. Moverman (who also penned Jesus’ Son), co-wrote the screenplay with James Ellroy (Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential). Foster also co-produces Rampart.
It’s puzzling that with such a dream team at work that this film isn’t the next great Arthur Miller-style Death of a Cop-man. We just don’t feel for Brown the way we do for a Willy Loman. Some of the drama is drawn in messy broad strokes. It dwells on shock factor, violence and Brown’s moral vicissitudes. No doubt Harrelson deserves acclaim for his convincing and honest portrayal, but he cannot dress up this Brown turd. It’s not a character that will go down in movie history.
The only explanation for such a squandering of talent might owe to the dreaded osmosis of reality TV and the de rigeuer documentary-style moviemaking so prevalent today, clichés of today’s ADD culture and self-indulgent arthouse moviemaking, too.
The corralling of all-stars in Rampart can only be beat by Jimmy Kimmel these days, and their roles are just tasty morsels in what amounts to dressed-up cafeteria buffet line. For sure, you’ll be entertained by some truly stellar visceral moments and eye candy but don’t go into this shithead roasting hungry.
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2012.