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In his second directorial feature, Oren Moverman firmly eschews the rules of hard-boiled cop cinema. Instead, he offers a surprisingly human story of a man born 30 years too late—Rampart is what Dirty Harry may have been if Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, .44 Magnum, and trademark of the “Do you feel lucky?” one-liner, had patrolled the Los Angeles beat in 1999.
Rampart is set in the heat of a real-life scandal involving the LAPD’s Rampart division, wherein members of its elite anti-gang unit framed, shot, and beat citizens without provocation. Despite the undoubtedly Hollywood touch of adding a lone hero to the story, Moverman wisely resists this motif and serves up meatier fare by focusing on one of Rampart’s errant officers. Detective Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is cut from tough 1970s-era cloth. By the midpoint of the film, Brown has thoroughly roughed up a thug in the backroom of a store, suffered accusations of murdering a serial date rapist, and been pilloried by the public after beating a suspect into the hospital’s intensive care unit.
While Brown fits the description of the genre’s cocky misanthrope detective, Moverman endows him with a rare depth. Brown does not willingly choose solitude—while he has a home and a family, he sleeps in the shed behind the house that his daughters and two ex-wives share because they cannot tolerate him. And to make the situation worse, his ex-wives are sisters.
In his attempts to deal with others, his inability to entertain their perspectives makes him impossible to bear. When a black officer accuses him of corruption, Brown is dismissive and assumes that he is simply jealous of a white man. He is being neither evasive nor consciously racist—his views on race relations and police work simply take root in a past time, and haven’t progressed since. Perhaps his eldest daughter is right when she confronts him saying, “You’re a dinosaur, Date Rape.”
Despite his rigidity, Brown seems to know that he carries a good deal of sin on his shoulders. He subsists on cigarettes, barely sleeps, and generally tries to drive himself into the ground. This is a man who hates himself. Brown seeks oblivion and absolution, drinking, taking pills, and sleeping with any attractive woman who will have him. He is fatally flawed; a man incapable of changing his ways will never be able to forget them.
Harrelson plays Brown masterfully. He is like a tightly-wound coil, and we continuously expect him to explode. In one of his best performances, Harrelson deftly showcases his talent in playing a multifaceted character with fury as his only main tool.
The cinematography consists of many close shots, confronting the viewer with Brown’s sweaty face and violent gaze, ensuring that we see the totality of what he is.
After watching Rampart, one comes away with the uncomfortable feeling of having seen an ugly, yet starkly honest side of a human being. Maybe it’s by identifying with some aspect of it that we can truly appreciate it.
