Rampart: Anti-Hero Character Study

Rampart’s tagline is a warning to us that we’re about to see the most corrupt cop ever displayed on screen. A bold statement that I’m not sure I agree with considering I’ve seen Bad Lieutenant. But Woody Harrelson’s Detective David Brown could easily be one of the most corrupt human beings to grace cinema in recent memory. And this makes for a superb character study, but not for the most enjoyable film experience.

But not all movies should be pleasant. I found it interesting that director Oren Moverman’s film came out the same year as Steve McQueen’s Shame. Both aren’t movies that you’d tell someone to run out to see when they ask you, “Hey, I’m looking for a good flick, have any recommendations?” I highly recommend both, actually, but not for reasons people tend to go to the theater. Many people simply want to be entertained, not made to feel uncomfortable or even disgusted. Yet sometimes those are the stories that need to be told, and I’m glad that filmmakers like Moverman and McQueen are daring to bring audiences material that won’t necessarily make anyone feel better about the world after having seen them. Such is life. So, too, should be cinema.

Harrelson is electrifying as David Brown, a charming, narcissistic, chain-smoking, martini-drinking, womanizing bigot who happens to also be a controversial detective in the Rampart Division of the LAPD. Even before the beating that sets this story in motion, we learn about his ignoble nickname, Date Rape Dave, given to him for being tied to the murder of a serial rapist for which Brown was never convicted. But his questionable moral compass isn’t tied only to his career; Brown is corrupt down to his odd family life: marrying two sisters consecutively, having a daughter to each of them, and then moving them in next door to each other so that he can attempt to keep this dysfunctional family together – all the while he’s not actually romantically involved with either woman any longer. Once he beats an African-American motorist whose vehicle crashed into Brown’s, he’s the focus of the entire city’s attention. But Brown never wavers, claiming that he not only didn’t overstep his bounds, he went easy on the man. His fragile life comes apart at the seams as he tries to keep his job and his place in his family.

Despite being co-written by famed LA crime novelist James Ellroy, this isn’t Dark Blue or Street Kings. Those examined corruption within the ranks of police officers while Rampart is definitively a slow-moving character study about David Brown, the man. Don’t go into this looking for gunfights, chase scenes, or crazy plot twists. Surprisingly enough, it’s more like Shame than either of those previous Ellroy works, not just due to the unpleasantness that both films ooze but also share their similar pace, focus, and structure – down to the end-of-second-act descent, showing just how low both men go.

This heavy subject matter is nothing new for Moverman, whose previous film (also starring Harrelson and co-star Ben Foster), The Messenger, exposed the unseen human collateral from war by deployed risky camera choices to create a powerful cinematic experience within a character study – most notably the single, long static shot between Foster and co-star Emily Watson in her kitchen. Moverman gets even more adventurous in Rampart, but not always to total success. In particular, when Brown meets with the city mayor, the police chief, and other officials, Moverman places the camera in the middle of them all and spins it around as they rapid-fire spit dialogue at each other, with the lens rarely catching the speaker in time and usually not even placing them in frame. I appreciated that Moverman wanted to spice up a scene that needed to happen, yet has been traditionally done to death in cop movies. And that it perhaps spoke to the narrative spin that each character had on the controversial event in question. The execution unfortunately didn’t quite match the intent. Otherwise, his use of extreme close-ups, out-of-focus shots, hand-held camera, and a powerful use of sound and score showcase Moverman’s talents as a cinematic director, bringing life to films that rely more on their performances than special effects or camera tricks.

All signs point to Rampart being an extremely well-written, directed, and acted film. Yet I still find myself conflicted over whether I can give a solid recommendation. Perhaps that’s understandable, and even the desired response, for a film about someone so deeply unlikeable as David Brown. He’s truly a terrible person, whose only redeeming quality is how pathetic and vulnerable he becomes around his two daughters. Harrelson is incredible in portraying a man who loves his girls deeply yet doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to communicate with them, and even if he did, he’s already hurt them so much that they wouldn’t necessarily be willing to reciprocate. When he’s with them, we see the last remnants of Brown the decent human being, and their final scene together is absolutely masterful. I’m surprised that Harrelson didn’t get an Oscar nomination for that moment alone.

Of course, Moverman’s film is not without its flaws. For instance, I’m still trying to figure out Robin Wright’s character’s necessity in the film, aside from being on the wrong end of Brown’s paranoia and nasty temper. On a thematic level, she provides the legal flip-side to Brown’s coin: a defense lawyer who drinks herself into forgetting that she’s the one who helps criminals go free. Perhaps this is the writers showing that our system has created David Brown because what is a good cop to do when the courts let the bad guys back out on the streets that he’s sworn to protect? Of course, that’s all bullshit since Brown isn’t protecting the streets; he’s protecting himself. He’s acting in his own disturbing self-interest, which, apparently in the case of the murdered serial rapist, happened to coincide with the Greater Good. Maybe.

My main issue with Rampart is that it doesn’t make Brown’s choices all that morally ambiguous. From all angles, he’s a terrible person. Because of this, Rampart doesn’t leave us with much to debate. And in that sense, the tagline indeed rings true.