Scenes of the Crime: Chris Reviews Cop Land

Cop Land was a movie that took me by surprise. I had heard good things about it but with Sylvester Stallone in the lead there were certain assumptions I made going into watching the film. I expected It to be an over the top Crime/Action film that would be enjoyable but not have a lot of substance to it. Having just finished watching the film for the first time I have to say that all of my assumptions were wrong.

One of the first things I really liked about the film was the basic premise. If you have not seen the film the basic plot is that in New Jersey a bunch of New York City Cops have set up a community for their families to live in safety. Sylvester Stallone plays the Sheriff of the town who wanted to be in the NYPD but because of an act of heroism he lost his hearing in one of his ears and could not make the force. The conflict of course is that  many of these Cops are tied up with the Mob and have participated in some shady stuff that Internal Affairs is investigating. Sheriff Freddy Heflin (Sylvester Stallone) must decide if he will continue to let these guys run his town or step up and be a real cop.  

The Cast is pretty loaded with Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Peter Berg, Robert Patrick, John Spencer and Janeane Garofalo to name a few. That being said this is still Sylvester Stallone’s movie which is surprising considering the talent in the cast. Not only does he play the lead but he gives arguably the best performance of his career. There is some solid character development as he goes from pushover Sheriff who lets these City Cops run his town to eventually standing up and trying to be the real hero that he knows he can be. He manages to avoid the over the top acting he tends to settle into and gives a very compelling but subdued performance. The rest of the actors all have supporting roles but there really is not a bad performance out of the bunch. I honestly had not seen Peter Berg act outside of one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm when he fights Larry David and I thought he was pretty good in this. Robert Patrick was fun as a very seedy cop and henchman to Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro helped lend a sense of legitimacy as he is the go to guy for crime movies. He also has an awesome scene with Stallone (the “YOU BLEW IT” scene).

While the performances are pretty great and the story is very interesting the pacing is a bit jumbled and occasionally drags. I feel like this tends to happen a lot in Mob movies because there are just so many characters that none get enough time to really shine. Sylvester Stallone and Ray Liotta are the only characters that feel dynamic and the rest feel more like stereotypes of cops and mobsters rather than well-developed characters.

This was a great start to director James Mangold's career (his second film) and it would be fun to see him try his hand in the genre again someday. There are some very great moments in this film that make it highly enjoyable and there are a lot of good performances. Unfortunatly they were not written particularly well which is really the major flaw with this film and prevents it from becoming a classic and makes it simply a very good crime movie.

 MY RATING-

4 out of 5           

 

-Chris "Da Franchize" Hart