Rampart Reviews

A hell of a cast for such a messy movie. Harrelson pulls off the bad-ass cop routine and I like some of the camera techniques; but the story was just not enjoyable.

Even though this movie didn’t get much love (just check the ratings here on Listal and Imdb), I was still intrigued by this flick and the fact that Roger Ebert really loved it made it even more interesting. Eventually, I thought it was pretty good but not really brilliant though. I mean, pretty much like in ‘The Messenger’, the previous directing effort by Oren Moverman also starring Woody Harrelson, the directing was really solid and he managed to create some truly 3 dimensional characters but the story didn’t really convince me. First of all, it was hardly original. I mean, by now, I have seen my share of movies dealing with dirty cops (even though David Brown was not necessarily corrupted, he was still messed up and really violent) and while this one was really well made, it didn’t show anything really new. Furthermore, the narrative was a little bit confusing and while the cast was good, there were just too many supporting characters. Still, there is no denying that Woody Harrelson delivered once again a fearless performance, it was great to see him as the lead and he was simply terrific. To conclude, even though it is indeed flawed, I still think it deserves more credit and it is definitely worth a look.