Rampart | Film review

In the sweltering gridlock of Los Angeles, officer Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) patrols the streets in a booze-and-rage-fueled haze. The other cops call him Date Rape, not because of his own transgressions, but rather those of a sex offender he’s said to have murdered years earlier. Dave’s teenage daughter (Brie Larson) pegs him as a racist, a sexist and a dinosaur. She doesn’t know the half of it. Women, pills and the bottle keep this Bad Lieutenant going, though what he’s really hooked on is self-destruction. Harrelson, an actor rich with swaggering-cowboy charisma, twists his goofball grin into a sinful sneer. It’s an electrifying performance, all sweat and silver-tongued loathing.

You look at Rampart and see a case study in how to take a familiar genre blueprint—the crooked cop on the edge—and explode it into something loose and primal. The film’s been directed by Oren Moverman, who also worked with Harrelson on 2009’s The Messenger. Here the two expand on the conversational aimlessness of that earlier movie, bouncing seething Dave among cooler-headed colleagues and fed-up family members. Though Moverman hasn’t quite shaken his rookie affectations—there’s a drugged-out club scene that should have gotten the ax—he lends Rampart the urban-hell atmosphere of a great ’70s police drama.

The ramshackle plot, cooked up by Moverman and L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy, commences when Dave brutalizes a civilian on camera, setting off a Rodney King–style media frenzy and pitting his own precinct against him. This is just the beginning of our antihero’s troubles; after a while, all we’re really watching is someone circle the drain. Credit Harrelson and his director for making this slow burn so compelling. And save us a seat at whatever the two collaborate on next.