Lucybespro
It is a performances centric movie
Smartorhypo
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Grimossfer
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
Brennan Camacho
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
Claudio Carvalho
In 1999, in Los Angeles, the brutal, racist and womanizer Police Officer David "Dave" Douglas Brown (Woody Harrelson) works at the Rampart Division. He lives with his dysfunctional family composed by the ex- wives Catherine (Anne Heche) and Barbara (Cynthia Nixon) and his two daughters Margaret (Sammy Boyarsky) and Helen (Brie Larson) in the same house. Dave frequently goes to single bars to have one night stand with lonely women. He was accused in the past of executing a rapist but was considered not-guilty. When his police car is crashed by a Mexican driver, the man runs and Dave brutally beats him but is filmed on video. Now the Rampart Division is being prosecuted while the Internal Affairs is investigating Dave. He spends his savings with the lawyers and needs to raise money. What will Dave do?"Rampart" is a pointless and messy film with a senseless story that goes no where. What is the intention of the director and writer is the great question about this terrible movie. The cynical character performed by Woody Harrelsonoes not seem to feel bad with his behavior; but when her confesses his misconduct in a tape to the Internal Affairs agent the viewer realizes that he is aware of everything he did wrong. There are several inconclusive subplots along the story and the viewer gets lost about where the story goes. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Um Tira Acima da Lei" ("A Cop above the Law")
Robert J. Maxwell
It doesn't sound too promising -- Woody Harrelson as a veteran of the LAPD who once shot a date rapist and now, years later, seems to be scapegoated by the division because of an unfolding scandal. Somebody has to go and Internal Affairs is out to see that somebody does.It sounds like another LAPD shoot-'em-up with a bloodbath every ten minutes but it's not. No shots have been fired, and no explosions have occurred. There's not even a high speed pursuit by cars, planes, boats, trains, or bicycles.Instead Harrelson, in a very nicely textured performance, his head stylishly shaved bald, is presented as a tough and embittered cop whose social life is a fetid swamp of pathos. He appears to have two wives (or girl friends or sisters) or maybe three. Each makes an occasional appearance in his life but he screws up the bond one way or another.One of the ways is that he extorts over-the-counter leapers and sleepers from a pharmacist. Another way is that he seems to sip from a pint of booze as he drives around the city alone in his black-and-white. He makes absurd demands of people and when they don't play his game he becomes furious.All of the performances are good, particularly those whose relationship with Harrelson is ambivalent, and who find themselves trapped in an approach/avoidance conflict.But Harrelson, hung over, sweaty, falling down drunk, could probably carry the film by himself.He's given a great deal of help by the director Oren Moverman who lends the images a slightly arty effect, sometimes a little too arty. Woody drives in despair through the night and the camera gives us a nice close up of his ear, silhouetted by the headlights of the cars behind him. Oh, yes -- his left ear. But at other time he trusts the viewer enough to figure out what's happening off screen. The location shooting is fine too, capturing the shimmering heat of Los Angeles' streets, the sunshine and smog.There is no redemption at the end, either, and I kind of liked that. It's a good evocation of despair. The screenplay originated with James Ellroy, whose values you may or may not like. I don't. He's said in interviews that the police should be given free rein on the streets and not interfered with by the suits. His sympathies probably lay with this Dirty Harry character rather than with the division's attempt to clean itself up.
marccarlton13
This movie is not very good at all on the front of the DVD case it says "dazzling and stunning...HARRELSON is astonishing well I totally disagree with this. It is a dark movie following L.A. cop Dave brown (Woody Harrelson) going around getting everyone on his bad side and beating people up it is a very badly made movie it does not seem to have a beginning or end it just seems to start half way through a movie then end badly with you not knowing what was even going on Woody Harrelson did some very good acting in a movie called "Friends with benefits" which I highly recommend to watch and he's not the main actor but his performance is professional but anyone thinking about buying this movie I would not recommend buying it and save your money.
jackasstrange
Rampart may have good intentions, but fails at executing it.In the start, as we can see, it tries to show us the life of a corrupt cop and also tries to somehow makes the viewer to sympathize with the dirty man. Well, it don't works. It's impossible to care about the protagonist. He is just a creepy, despicable nobody manipulated by the system, a loser which later shows in the film that also has a very generic personality, despite being a hot-head kind of guy. Impossible to care about a character like that. But fine. The film develops a overused and mildly interesting premise in the start. But then, in the middle of it's running time, the film totally loses it's focus creating yet another conflict, a situation apparently worse(by worse i mean uninteresting) than the first presented in the beginning. And the film keeps creating these 'sub-plots' until it suddenly ends. Yes. The film ends without any explanation of anything. Horrible.But yeah, the performances were quite good, Harrelson did a good job as the protagonist, but his character just didn't affected me at all. I didn't felt involved with him at all, and 80% of the things he did in the film were totally uninteresting and almost without any connection with the 'main premise'.And the stylized editing looked like a fail attempt to mask the uninteresting events in the film. It was meaningless. Remove the edition and you can barely stand this film.Anyways, it may be watchable, if you are really interested in losing 100 minutes of your day. 5.0/10