Director: Oren Moverman.
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Sigourney Weaver.
Synopsis: Set in 1999 Los Angeles, veteran police officer Dave Brown, the last of the renegade cops, works to take care of his family, and struggles for his own survival.
Rampart is a hard film to review because at times it’s a hard film to watch. It centres around Woody Harrelson’s character David Brown and the gradual descent of his life and everything around him.
Harrelson makes for compelling viewing and he is doing some of his finest work in this film. His character is nasty, dirty, unpredictable and the last of its kind, it’s like Training Day but without all the alpha male bravado bollocks that Denzel Washington’s portrayal had in that film.
However, even with Harrelson’s brilliant central performance, Rampart is strangely compelling yet never much fun to watch. It’s not popcorn cinema, it has no action scenes to its name, not that it should, and it moves at a very slow pace, but it always feels real and every character is fully compelling even if some of them don’t get enough screen time. The cast by the way is phenomenal, with Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Steve Buscemi, Robin Wright and Ice Cube all doing sterling work with minimal roles.
As I’ve already said, Rampart can be difficult to watch but it is worth your time if you have the patience for it and want to see Woody Harrelson pulling an absolute blinder as the lead character.
