Rampart is one mess of a movie that guts by (barely) on the merits of Woody Harrelson (Natural Born Killers, Transsiberian). I can’t say it’s worth the watch because of him, but it would have been an excruciating two hours had he not been the star. Its 76% approval rating on www.rottentomatoes.com is somewhat alarming, considering how incoherent and inconsistent the script was. This was a must-see movie when I saw that it was reuniting Harrelson with director Oren Moverman. The two struck gold with Moverman’s directorial debut, 2009’s The Messenger. That movie had a purpose. It had believable drama. It had a meaningful storyline. Never did it cause you to ask yourself, “Huh?” or “What just happened?” or “How are these characters getting away with all they are getting away with?” Instead, Rampart ends up being just one jumbled, incoherent disaster.

Harrelson stars as Dave Brown, a rogue and corrupt Los Angeles cop. He’s referred to by his colleagues, friends, family, and even people he doesn’t know as “Date Rape” because, though he was never proven guilty, it is well believed that he killed a serial rapist some years before 1999, the year that the story revolves around. Brown is a racist, a womanizer, and an alcoholic who has a God complex. He is the father of two daughters. His care for his daughters is apparent, but his care for his daughters is misguided. It is hard to tell whether his oldest daughter despises or pities him more. His youngest daughter seems to love him but is also scared of him. It seems, at times, that Brown’s only redeeming quality is his want to be a better father, even if his actions don’t always show it. But he is so self-absorbed in trying to get out of his messes that his daughters become somewhat of an afterthought, and thus, we have no rooting interest in Brown.

There is a little story to this movie. We have a bad cop (though I’m not necessarily sure I’d use the word dirty) who has gone rogue. The film chronicles Brown’s problems. The more involved his issues become, the more desperate his attempts to save himself and the more self-inflicted his wounds become. Suppose we wanted to see a movie about a cop who tries to use his resources to escape the terrible situations he put himself in. In that case, we could follow plenty of true stories rather than one about a man with two daughters, each with a different woman, who are actually sisters. One big, happy family, you might think? Hardly. If one of the women denies his question about sex, he moves to the next one. He’ll try his luck at one of the local bars if she says no. On one lucky night, he meets the sultry Linda (Robin Wright – Forrest Gump, The Pledge ), with whom he develops a purely physical relationship.

The biggest problem with this movie might be that we’ve seen so many other cop movies and television shows. The protocol of what we are used to seeing when a cop fires his pistol in the line of duty and beats an assailant to a pulp while it is being recorded on film, or does any of the other things that give cops a bad name, isn’t followed. Sure, Brown is questioned, and some of the procedures are followed as you would expect them to be followed. But then he is put back into active duty and onto the street as if nothing that bad that he had just done even matters.

Other problems in the movie are that the timeline is supposed to be a couple of months, but it feels as if only a few days have progressed in the film. For example, there is a scene of Brown beating a man that a pedestrian catches on a handheld camera. It is reminiscent of the Rodney King incident. An investigation occurs, but Brown can still work the streets rather than being suspended or placed on administrative duties. Again, the investigation is supposed to happen over at least a few weeks, if not a couple of months, but the sequence of events is cramped into a tight time frame.

This movie sucks.

Plot 7/10
Character Development 5/10
Character Chemistry 5/10
Acting 7.5 (Harrelson did great, but the script crumbled around him)
Screenplay 5/10
Directing  5/10
Cinematography 8/10 (grungy LA, no glamour)
Sound 5/10
Hook and Reel 5/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
59.5%

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