In good movies or bad, Sylvester Stallone has the face of a wounded hero: rigid and seething, boyish yet resolute, bristling with buried hurts. When we see him on the screen — and we’ve seen him in mostly weak or dramatically trivial movies for the past decade — we expect him to react violently, to strike back hard. Other movie characters may brush-off or instantly react to insults and injuries, but Stallone stores them up, saving them for a final explosive reaction.
“Cop Land,” one of the best movies Stallone has made since his 1976 breakthrough, “Rocky,” buries that latent heroism in a wall of flab, flesh, good will and slow, shambling deference: In the persona of a lovable small-town sheriff named Freddy Heflin, whom many residents in the little New Jersey community of Garrison either take for granted or pick on. Because Freddy is Stallone, we suspect that, sometime before the movie’s end, that swallowed-up anger will come ripping out. Which it does — to surprisingly moving effect.
“Cop Land” is a thinking person’s action movie, an unusual project for Stallone. Written and directed by James Mangold — who made last year’s almost self-consciously sensitive small-town drama, “Heavy” — this film surrounds its vulnerable hero with a great cast of antagonists: Martin Scorsese veterans like Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta; Young Turks like Michael Rapaport, Janeane Garofalo, Peter Berg and Annabella Sciorra. The presence of all those virtuosos and comers seems to invigorate Stallone.
“Cop Land’s” Freddy is a small-town clown. Half-deaf, with a sweet forbearing smile on his face, Freddy drifts through the hard-edged community of big city New York cops who live in his bailiwick of Garrison because they can’t stand the city of New York: the scum, blood and constant peril of their daily jobs. These cops — led by tough, agate-eyed natural honcho Ray Donlan (Keitel) — represent what Freddy wanted to be, but what he lost when, as a teenager, he jumped into a local river to save a beautiful girl drowning in a car wreck. Ear drum punctured, Freddy couldn’t make the NYPD. And he lost the drowning girl that he loved, Liz (Sciorra), to a cocky, handsome New York cop in Ray’s bunch, Joey Randone (Berg).
Fueling Freddy’s discontent are the rages and accusations of another NYPD vet, cocaine addict Gary “Figs” Figgis (Liotta), who blames Ray for something that happened to “Figs’ ” ex-partner. Bringing matters to a boil are a mysterious series of incidents involving another of Garrison’s NYPD cops, Murray Babitch (Rapaport). Nicknamed “Superboy,” Murray lost his head after a heavy drinking night and fired on two unarmed African American joy-riders on the Hudson River bridge to Jersey, killing them both — and precipitating a violent racial controversy among the cops who later arrive on the scene.
Now, Murray has disappeared, supposedly a suicide into the Hudson River. But internal affairs investigator Moe Tilden (De Niro), an old classmate of Ray’s, suspects something darker, and he wants Freddy to stir around the dirt. All these conflicts, and the mystery of what really happened to “Superboy” on the bridge, lead to a climactic outburst that takes the whole movie back to its movie western roots.
“Cop Land” is about Freddy the wannabe cop, rising to the occasion against the NYPD cops who live in Garrison. And it’s also about Stallone the superstar, trying to crash one of the heaviest acting communities in movies: going toe to toe with De Niro, Keitel and Liotta. In a way, both conclusions are foregone. But, anyone who admired the young Stallone of the first “Rocky” will be rooting for him here. They won’t be disappointed.
In outline, “Cop Land” is not all that dissimilar from the standard Stallone action movies of the ’80s and ’90s. Like “Rambo,” “Lockup” or “Cliffhanger,” it’s about a battered hero who finally fights back and triumphs. But, in emotional effect, it’s a world away. Mangold, here and in “Heavy,” tackles painful material with a gentle, dolorous style. He tries to dig into the humanity of the characters, make them breathe. In “Cop Land,” he takes an archetypal story — the lone Westerner standing up against a corrupt community — and tenderizes and humanizes it.
Much of the movie consists of knifelike confrontations among the cops and scenes where Freddy, with a soft and melancholy gaze, goes about his daily duties. The whole emotional aspect of the story — the regrets and resentments that come from not being what you want or not being with whom you want — is a powerful current beneath the drudgery and humiliation of Freddy’s existence. “Cop Land,” at heart, is an old-fashioned story of unlikely heroic redemption in extreme circumstances. The movie’s biggest flaw, in fact, lies is the extremity of those circumstances: the howling unlikeliness of the conspiracy around “Superboy.”
But working for “Cop Land” is its magnificent supporting cast, all near the top of their game, plus the tough naturalistic dialogue and the joy the actors take in unleashing it. “Cop Land” is especially Stallone’s triumph — as it was intended to be — but it’s also the triumph of character and drama over pyrotechnics in cop movies. Mangold’s script has the strength, the “bones” Stallone used to say he admired in good screenplays, but it still could have been twisted into a more typical action vehicle. It wasn’t. As a filmmaker, Mangold is more interested in scenes that get their tension from dialogue and emotion. He wants the world to explode from his words. At the movie’s best, it does.
And at Stallone’s best, he proves it’s wrong to prejudge stars. Keitel and Liotta have the film’s meatiest acting roles — and they’re both terrific, as is De Niro. That’s something we expect from those three. Stallone’s Freddy, with his excess weight and amiable doofus look, is a character we wouldn’t have anticipated.
Much like a good, old-fashioned western, “Cop Land” raises your spirits in the end. Whatever its flaws, it’s a movie with a strong moral core and a cast that deeply engages your attention and sympathies. “Cop Land” is deliberately shaped as an actors’ showcase and as a career-changer for Stallone. But with actors like these, there’s no cause for complaint. And though the older Stallone we see here has a lot more under his belt and, obviously, fewer films in his future, maybe they’ll be better movies (like this one), with less blood and guts and more flesh and bones.
”COP LAND”
(star) (star) (star) 1/2
Directed and written by James Mangold; photographed by Eric Edwards; edited by Craig McKay; production designed by Lester Cohen; music by Howard Shore; produced by Cary Woods, Cathy Konrad, Ezra Swerdlow. A Miramax release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:44. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.
THE CAST
Freddy Heflin ……………….. Sylvester Stallone
Ray Donlan ………………….. Harvey Keitel
Gary “Figs” Figgis …………. Ray Liotta
Moe Tilden ………………….. Robert De Niro
Joey Randone ………………… Peter Berg
Murray “Superboy” Babitch …… Michael Rapaport
Cindy Betts …………………. Janeane Garofalo
Liz Randone …………………. Annabella Sciorra
