Rampart
Directed by Oren Moverman
Written by James Ellroy and Oren Moverman
Written by James Ellroy and Oren Moverman
with Woody Harrelson, Ned Beatty, Robin Wright
2011
Dragging on an endless supply of cigarettes, Woody Harrelson swaggers his way through Los Angeles as Dave Brown, a member of the heroically corrupt Rampart division of the LAPD. Formed to combat gang warfare and street crime, Rampart became entwined in the thing it was meant to be fighting before exploding in a shower of legal cases at the close of the 90s. We follow Harrelson’s character during the outbreak of the scandal, as he watches the fallout of a career spent in corruption, brutality, and behaving like an extrovert Travis Bickle finally catch up with him.
No real effort is made to allow the audience to identify or sympathise with Brown; he is screwed up, unattractive and immoral in almost every conceivable way. Rather than building up a robust character arc through which we learn about him and hopefully reach some level of understanding, Oren Moverman instead goes for the bigger picture, in which we see the cop as a small part of a larger culture of disaffection. At his heart, Dave Brown is a standard right-wing nut trapped in a cycle of impotent frustration, shamelessly exploitative of those around him on the one hand, while disgusted at any attempt to make him contribute on the other. His reaction to the investigation into his conduct is one of disdain and incredulity, and he remains incapable of engaging with it on its own terms, preferring to stick to his usual methods of behind-the-scenes haggling. In spite of this, we are kept more or less on his side because he is ultimately being made a scapegoat in the political maneuverings of the police department and the city. When he does confess, it is to an entire career of misdemeanor, and true; it is rejected because it’s not a confession for the more ambiguous crime that they need for political purposes.
I didn’t mention Travis Bickle solely as a convenient psycho reference point; Rampart really did remind me quite a lot of Taxi Driver. Obviously this partly stems from its rotten-to-the-core portrayal of the U.S. establishment, but that’s such a thoroughly covered concept now that it doesn’t really count. It’s more through the presentation of an environment entirely from the perspective of individuals who stand off-kilter to the mainstream, which they are trying to make their own sense of. As a filmmaking device, Brown functions in a similar manner to Bickle in that the moral chaos surrounding him is presented to us through his eyes, and, however much we may approve or disapprove of the character, it is through him we understand it. Both men are Vietnam veterans, both treat their jobs as identities rather than mere occupations (and, importantly, there are similar, voyeuristic, patrolling elements to those jobs), and both feel discarded, that society is moving on in a way that’s threatening their relevance.
I’d like to be able to say this film is as compelling as Taxi Driver, but unfortunately I'd be lying. Co-written by James Ellroy, of The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential fame, the dialogue is sharp enough to carry through a series of set pieces that don’t really hang around in your head afterwards: a string of family scenes, shady meetings, bars and restaurants, street life, the usual movie-L.A. Quite a number of recognisable faces pop up out of nowhere and are gone. Woody Harrelson is the only figure we are with long enough for them to become established in the narrative, and while he’s good, for a mumbly-talky film such as this you need more to hang on to. Also, I’m definitely getting tired of club scenes being used as the nadir of a character arc. I know nightclubs can be grim sometimes, but oppressive noise, flashing lights and general debauchery are a pretty lazy and puritanical way of suggesting a low point. Here we get a red-lit Woody Harrelson face-smearingly gorging himself on burgers, like a demon feasting on the damned. Calm down!
Tom
Tom
0 comments:
Post a Comment