Rampart (film)

''Rampart'' is a 2011 American crime drama film. Directed by Oren Moverman and co-written by Moverman and James Ellroy, the film stars Woody Harrelson, Ned Beatty, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Ice Cube, Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, and Steve Buscemi. It is set in the midst of the fallout from the Rampart scandal of the late 1990s, when corrupt Los Angeles Police Department Officer Dave Brown (Harrelson) is forced to face the consequences of his wayward career. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2011. and was released in theaters in the U.S. on February 10, 2012.

Plot

Dave Brown (Harrelson), a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), patrols the Rampart Division. While training a new officer, he roughs up a suspect to find the location of a meth lab. After work, he goes home to his two daughters and two ex-wives, who are also sisters (Heche and Nixon). After dinner, he goes to a piano bar where he picks up a stranger and has a one night stand.

The next day, Brown is t-boned in his patrol car. When the other driver attempts to flee, Brown brutally beats him, and the assault is captured on video by a bystander. The video creates another controversy for the LAPD, which is already besieged by the recent Rampart scandal. The Assistant District Attorney (Weaver) urges Brown to simply retire. He refuses and outlines his defense. Over the course of the film, it is revealed that although Brown failed the bar exam, he remains extremely knowledgeable about case law.

Back at the piano bar, Brown picks up a lawyer named Linda (Wright), after first determining that she is not surveilling him. Later he meets with ex-cop Hartshorn (Beatty), who suggests that Brown was set up to distract from the scandal. As the LAPD exerts more pressure on Brown, he retains legal counsel. Soon after, his ex-wives ask him to leave their houses so that they can sell them. Brown meets Hartshorn again and mentions his need for cash. Hartshorn tips him off to a high stakes card game happening later that night at the Crystal Market.

While Brown surveils the card game, it is knocked off by two armed men. Brown pursues the gunmen, killing one of them and letting the other go. He then stages the scene to make it look like he was shot at. Brown realizes that a homeless man nicknamed "General" (Foster) witnessed the whole thing from his wheelchair. As another investigation into Brown heats up, he goes to a hotel and blackmails the concierge into giving him a room. Next, he blackmails a pharmacist into giving him an assortment of drugs.

When Brown next meets Hartshorn to give him a cut of the money from the card game, he asks for the source of Hartshorn's tip about the game. He suspects that he was set up again. Hartshorn refuses to name his source. Brown then meets with General in a parking lot to make sure that he will not testify about witnessing the shooting. The next day, an investigator with the District Attorney, Kyle Timkins (Cube) surveils Brown, who confronts him. Brown insists that he is not a racist, merely a misanthrope.

Brown grows increasingly paranoid and reliant on drugs as the pressure on him mounts. He pulls a gun on Hartshorn and accuses him of setting him up. The elderly man scuffles with Brown until he has a heart attack. Instead of calling an ambulance, Brown leaves him to die. Back at the hotel, Brown's two daughters drop off some dry cleaning at his room, and he confesses to his younger daughter that everything she has heard about him is true.

Brown summons Timkins to a meeting and tapes a confession in front of him. He admits that he has been a dirty cop, and that in 1987, he killed a business acquaintance. He justified the murder because he knew the man was a serial rapist, which is why he got away with the extrajudicial killing. Timkins refuses the confession, insisting that he will arrest Brown for his most recent murder. The film ends with Brown revisiting his family and staring at his elder daughter on the front porch before disappearing into the night.

Cast

Marketing

The marketing team behind ''Rampart'' posted controversial posters in several major U.S. cities before the film was released. They showed Harrelson’s character, Officer Dave Brown, beating a man with a baton. The posters stated "I Work For You" and were meant to look like street art posters. Oren Moverman, the director of ''Rampart'', said one of the producers had been "searching for an image that would be thought-provoking and challenging, not an indictment of a cop but rather a communal approach to the idea of policing'; the idea that maybe when cops do bad things it’s more of a reflection of society and what it is willing to tolerate, rather than the fault of one bad apple or an institutional problem. If they work for us, could it be they are us?"

Harrelson conducted several interviews to promote the film. In one interview with "The Playlist," Harrelson indicated "I had a period where I saw an early cut of the movie and didn't go for it, mainly because it was so different from the script and what we shot." Harrelson also lost significant weight to prepare for the role. During the same interview, he stated "I lost 30 pounds and a part of it was that I felt like he would have this relationship to food which is very similar to his relationship with women." Harrelson's take on the character was the following: "He can't really accept love, and if the food were representative of love. It's his inability to take that affection and nourishment." He went on to say about the character he played, "I would say if one emotion that is most at play with Dave Brown it would be paranoia. So that emotion was kind of with me quite a bit during the filming."

Reddit AMA

An attempt to market the film via the social news website Reddit went "horribly wrong", according to ''Forbes''. Harrelson agreed to answer questions in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit's massively popular IAmA subreddit, where notable people engage in Q&A sessions with the Reddit community. Redditors were disappointed by his answers and his apparent misunderstanding of the format, most notably refusing to answer a question regarding Harrelson's alleged sexual encounter with an individual at a prom afterparty, with some vowing to "boycott the flick". CNET characterized one of Harrelson's responses as "sheer oozing, all-about-me-ism".

Josh Feldman with MediaIte shared the following perspective: "a proxy for the actor basically gave vague answers to half of the questions and in-no-way subtle plugs for his upcoming movie Rampart to the other half. It was a public relations nightmare, and while it certainly raised awareness about the movie, it definitely backfired." Feldman went on to say about the incident, "it came across as robotic and represented an inability to connect with people when it should have been insanely easy to do so." Feldman summarized the lesson learned by stating the following, "When you’re doing an AMA on Reddit, you drop the act and engage with real people. Some will be fans, some won’t, but if you’re just honest and it doesn’t seem like your answers have been planned out, people will respect you for it." It has also been speculated by the Reddit community that it was not actually the actor answering the questions but instead a public relations agent for the movie.

Reception

Critical response

''Rampart'' received generally positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 74% based on 149 reviews, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The site's consensus was that "''Rampart'' sends viewers plummeting into a nihilistic hell of its protagonist's creation, yet Woody Harrelson's performance in the central role is too magnetic to dismiss". On Metacritic the film has a score of 70 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and praised Harrelson's performance, writing "Harrelson is an ideal actor for the role. Especially in tensely wound-up movies like this, he implies that he's looking at everything and then watching himself looking."
Peter Travers of ''Rolling Stone'' praised Harrelson's performance: "it could have been a bucket of bleak. But the electric talent of Harrelson and Moverman is too exciting to be anything but exhilarating."

Justin Chang of ''Variety'' wrote: "While the film is drenched in atmosphere and packs a verbal and visceral punch, its relentless downward spiral makes for an overdetermined, not entirely satisfying character study."
Kirk Honeycutt of ''The Hollywood Reporter'' wrote: "Harrelson goes full bore from the opening scene and there are no scenes he is not in. But the effect is wearying rather than exhilarating."

Box office

''Rampart'' was a box office bomb, opening at No. 47 and earning only $60,446 on its opening weekend across 5 theatres in North America. It ended up making just $972,512 domestically and $595,393 elsewhere across 106 theaters for a total of $1,567,905 against an estimated $12 million budget. In addition, total domestic video sales were equal to $2,150,130.

Awards

* African American Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
* Nominated – Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead
* Nominated – Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture

References

External links

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Rampart movie trailers

{{James Ellroy

2011 films
2011 drama films
American drama films
Fictional portrayals of the Los Angeles Police Department
Films about police misconduct
Films directed by Oren Moverman
Films set in 1999
Films set in Los Angeles
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films with screenplays by James Ellroy
Films with screenplays by Oren Moverman
Hood films
Films about police brutality
2010s English-language films
2010s American films