Cop Land (1997)

Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro star in this 1997 crime drama. This takes place in Garrison, a small, New Jersey town where we meet Sheriff, Freddy Heflin (Stallone) who not only wants more in his life, but idolizes some of the cops in town and across the river in New York. Soon, he discovers that one of the cops, Ray Donlan (Keitel) and others are involved in mob connections and tries to bring order. Liotta (Goodfellas) plays cop, Gary Figgis and De Niro (Heat) plays Internal Affairs agent, Moe Tilden. Robert Patrick (The Faculty), Peter Berg (Shocker), Michael Rapaport (Higher Learning), Annabella Sciorra (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) and Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull) co-star. This is a good crime drama with a great cast and Howard Shore's score is excellent as usual. I recommend this.

The opening shot of this movie is fantastic; A striking aerial shot that is overdubbed by De Niro. It's the perfect monologue to set the stage for what all intents and purposes should be a crime epic.What follows is one of the poorest portrayals of police corruption on film ever. The Garrison dwelling cops come off more as heartless/mindless thugs than actual conniving/morally compromised police. It all plays out in a messy, overly complicated fashion that just left me bewildered and unsatisfied.

Yeah, Stallone is v good, director better. You can kinda see where he has maybe told Stallone 'Here, lower your head, a bit of contrition, you're an elected sheriff, you gotta kowtow to the others' but dammit it is well done. Keitel of course great but a few others make it a good movie too, well scripted, Liota surprising, and Janine rocks as sidekick partner, love her role, v understated given her usual thing. The scene with Stallone and one of the good ones that had been taken, is actually really well done and short, simple, and sweet, but not overly done. I'm thoroughly enjoying this movie. I have been searching and sadly can't find much but I think it deserved more awards.

This movie is an absolute gem! A slow burn, no doubt, but every scene -every moment- pays off.I wonder how different this movie's legacy would be if it were released nowadays. Everything that audiences love about Breaking Bad or True Detective etc is here in spades.In fact, I'd argue that this film is the 2nd season of True Detective that people wanted. An absolute perfect urban western.And the performances are just incredible. Every single actor is bringing their "A" game, and an argument could be made that each one gives one of the, if not THE, best performances of their careers. I wish Stallone would do more movies like this, because he clearly has the chops. Deniro as well (who has since become regulated to flaccid studio fare). Just because he can't pull off Cape Fear excellence anymore doesn't mean he has to do The Intern.I hope something happens that causes people to revisit this film.