Rampart

Director Oren Moverman lives up to his surname in his telling of the Rampart police scandal of the late 1990’s. The camera doesn’t hold still for long as all sorts of (s)wanky shots litter the screen, including a bizarre over the top piece of direction where a three way conversation is told via a camera spinning through 360 degrees for a number of minutes. Clever it may be, but it’s distracting enough even before you start to feel the motion sickness. This is a good summation of the film in itself though, as Moverman distracts the audience in plenty of other ways in order to cover up the somewhat thin plot. That isn’t to say fans of Kubrick, Hitch et al won’t appreciate all the trickery. Moverman’s film follows LA cop Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) as he attempts to sneak under the radar whilst abusing his authoritative power when opportunities arrive. The obvious comparison here is Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, but Rampart falls miles behind that film both in terms of it’s leading protagonist and its screenplay. It’s been a while since Harrelson has had a dramatic a lead role such as this, the last being in 2009’s The Messenger where he was again directed by Moverman. Moverman got a cracking performance from Harrelson back then, but although Harrelson is will above average again here, the character doesn’t capture the imagination that that film’s eponymous individual did (even though I’m pretty certain Harrelson is in every single scene of this film). The look and ambiance of the film is where Moverman does score points though. Many films set in LA attempt to capture the atmosphere of a city on the verge of collapse and Moverman does hit the spot here. This is the LA of sun and fun, but scratch the surface and your fingernails will become very grimy, very quickly. In effect this isn’t really a study on corruption at all, but more of a character study of one man’s slow descent due to the vices in his life. The problem being when he’s as unlikable Brown, do we really care?

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
I expect that Moverman and Harrelson got a lot out of this personally, but it fails to grasp the attention for the average punter. Rating: 6/10.