2011. Dir: Oren Moverman. Starring: Woody Harrelson, Ned Beatty, Ben Foster, Sigourney Weaver and Robin Wright. ●●●●○
It's been a surprisingly long time since I last saw a film that was visually as stunning and arresting as Oren Moverman's Rampart. There are many positive elements to this movie, many aspects of sublime filmmaking that will stick in the memory for a long time, but above all there is the cinematography. Moverman has collaborated again with his The Messenger
DoP Bobby Bukowski and together they have thrown away the rule book, and made a piece of visual art for the screen.
In essence the story can be boiled down to the slow disintegration of corrupt cop Dave Brown, Woody Harrelson giving a career best performance, a violent racist bigot in a LA Rampart division uniform, the scandal (a widely reported culture of cops acting like vigilante gangs and committing violent and profit orientated acts) distilled into one individual. Not that Brown can be remotely described as an archetype, he's barely holding himself together at the beginning, father of two girls who mothers happen to be sisters living next door to each other, he functions purely on alcohol and cigarettes, routinely bullying his female partner and picking up one night stands in seedy bars. Known as "Date-Rape Dave", a moniker based on the alleged murder of a serial rapist Brown has avoided being charged for for years, an example of the vicious animal lurking within.
Yet even this thin veneer of normality is torn apart when he brutally retaliates against a motorist who crashes into the side of his patrol car. It is a cold and hard beating, captured on film by a passer-by, instantly going viral. Brown is taken off front line duty, temporarily, in the whirlwind of appalling press and daily campaigning the department, headed by Sigourney Weaver, attempt to oust him. It's when he decides to fight, when he faces the mounting defence bills that events spiral out of control.
Harrelson is perfect in roles like this, even as his most dislikeable there's a shimmer of magnetic insouciance, like the string of sexual conquests (former wives Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon, lovers Audra McDonald and Robin Wright) we find ourselves drawn to Dave. We want to be part of his world. It's testament to Harrelson's performance that even during the depths of depravity he can still draw us in, the cracks of mental defeat, the threats and pleading with his family and friends are never far behind his crumpling facade.
The rest of the performances are also high class. Robin Wright gives a brittle and wounded performance as a lawyer flickering around Brown, like a moth round a flame, a flame that will ultimately burn her. Ned Beatty also reminds us of his electric presence, as a retired cop still in tune with everything going on in the department, Machivellian and reptilian he toys with Brown, playing him off against the department.
The screenplay by Moverman and novelist James Ellroy contains the later's trademark staccato dialogue in a way that no adaptation of his work has managed, indeed the downbeat sprawling open feel towards the end is more Ellroy that anyone could have imagined.
But all this is a sideshow to Bukowski's work behind the camera. He uses Brown's breakdown as an opportunity to showcase new ideas with design, from a dizzying dance of pans during a tribunal to the nightmarish vision of a swingers club each scene dazzles with invention. We get conversations filmed from behind people's heads, repeated uses of reflected light, even the city skyline looks ominous and unusual in Bokowski's lens.
I must recommend Rampart to everyone who gets the opportunity to see it, a fantastic powerhouse of a film that beguiles and overcomes the audience. A must see.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Rampart
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
The Conspirator
2010. Dir: Robert Redford. Starring: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston and Tom Wilkinson. ●●○○○
The trouble with watching films that posit a political statement that you support is that whislt the euphoria of a high quality finished article is heightened so to is abject disappointment of poorly made movie making. Sadly The Conspirator falls squarely in the later camp, for it's liberal pleading for social justice and the rule of law the inadequacies of the movie itself somewhat negate the impact of the message.
The film opens, utterly pointlessly, on the field of battle - or at least the aftermath due to budgetary constraints - with James McAvoy's serious Lt. Frederick Aitken trying to keep the horribly injured Justin Long alive by telling him an inappropriate joke. Fortunately we never hear the end as medics arrive first to cart off McAvoy but he persuades them to tend to his friend first. I suppose the point of the scene is to introduce McAvoy's self-sacrificing nature and to reinforce the bravery of the man, even to highlight his stubborness. It pretty much fails on all counts as personally I never felt McAvoy's life was in danger, as horrific as his injury may appear there's little sense of sacrifice in the scene.
This scene is important though as those qualities are repeated and reflected in McAvoy's journey through the rest of the film, and it feels equally false in context of the legal battle to save Robin Wright's Mary Surratt the mother of the Lincoln assassination support team that got away. Yes, McAvoy loses membership of his officers club, his haughty girlfriend (Alexis Bledel) and finds his sholastic legal reputation tarnished but none of that seems like a great loss and he friends seem to be prepared to stick by him at all costs. Part of this issue is McAvoy - he seems uncomforatble in the role and fails to convince as a patriotic and torn soldier forced to defend a woman he clearly imagines as guilty.
The vast majority of the running time is given over to McAvoy's defence of the case, from the early days as a paralegal to Tom Wilkinson's Southern born senator (who knows he cannot win the case due to the perception of his loyalties during the civil war and eventually manouvres McAvoy into taking the case alone) to the final summation of the case where McAvoy rails against the clearly biased military court procedure with no jury organised and orchestrated by prosecution counsellor Danny Huston - tiptoeing malevavently around the court like an oiled spider.
Robin Wright gives a great performance as the proud Southern matriach, unapologetic for her thoughts and beliefs and stubbornly refusing to save her victimisation (the film unequivocably indicates her likely innocence) by selling out her absentee son. Stoical, even in the shadows of the gallows, Wright is able to bring layers to the character that simply aren't there in the script a tilt of the head or a flicker of cheeks making up for the lack of anything for her to do. Equally under-represented with the screenplay is Evan Rachel Wood as her daughter Anna, although she too tries her best dodging the over obvious symbolism in the set decoration.
Whenever we leave those two ladies the pace of the film suffers though, McAvoy's priviledged circle pontificate self-righteously but come across as boorish or irrelevant. Robert Redford, directing James D. Solomon's script, seems unable to coax any sense of reality form the supporting cast of Army officers and Kevin Kline's bespectacled Edwin Stanton, gleefully pushing over the rule of law in order to give the public the sense of retribution they desire is given no sense of character depth.
Redford has yet to make an interesting movie, essentially the best of his films have been well staged insightful scripts, and that workmanlike style is shown up in all it's inadequate slendour given the meandering, preachy script.
And remember this review is from someone who wanted to like the film. I would argue for the fundamental rights of habeous corpus for all. The continued injustice of Guantanamo Bay (and you could argue the foreign policies of extraordinary rendition, military tribunal and indefinate incarceration without charge are the real subjects of this film) is a cancer in the US constition, it blights the best intentions of the early signatories and the principles of justice must be applied to even those accused of the most heinous crimes. So just imagine what the the backers and apologists of the war on terror will make of this film.
We on the left deserve so much better.
