A hearing impaired man sits listening to Bruce Springsteen's Stolen Car on vinyl because listening in stereo doesn't work for him. Across from him is the woman he lost his half his hearing for. They speak of regret and lost hope and share a kiss. He's in love with her and knows he can never be with her. She knows it too. It's almost too upsetting to watch.
"And I'm driving a stolen car, on a pitch black night, and I'm telling myself I'm gonna be alright, but I ride by night and I travel in fear, that in this darkness I will disappear"
Cop Land is a brilliant film. I love it. It's one of the most underrated films of the 90's and one that needs to be revisited by a lot of folk. Sadly it's one that gets ignored by too many people because of who plays the lead role.
Freddy Heflin is the sheriff of a town called Garrison in New Jersey, right across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan. The town is home to a lot of NYPD cops who can't afford to live in the city and who don't want to live amongst the people they police. An accident in Freddy's youth rendered him deaf in one ear and therefore not eligible for a job in the Police department. Freddy is in awe of real cops but they look at him and treat him like a joke. One night an unlawful police involved shooting and it's subsequent cover up causes Freddy to re-evaluate his opinion of some of the people he looks up to. He's averted his gaze for far too long.
Copland is a complex tale and one that has almost too much story for one film. Plot points that other films would base entire stories on are passed by as mere lines of dialogue and it's left to the audience to keep up. There's no character in the film to stand in as proxy for us watching. No one to answer questions we need answered and thus we are left to read between the lines of what's being said to figure out certain things. It's great. It forces us to take notice and listen, forces you to put down your phone and use your brain. A film that doesn't spoon feed its story to us is always welcome and because of that, this is a rare film that improves with repeated viewings. I'm always a fan of a shorter movie but for this I'd happily make an exception. I dream of a three hour version of this. A director's cut released on DVD restored about 15 minutes which was just not enough for me. I'm a greedy fucker.
Director James Mangold's writing and directing creates an amazing sense of place. Garrison, New Jersey IS Cop Land. It's wild but on the surface it seems serene. Under the surface the cops that live there run amok. Law makers are wanton law breakers. They rule the roost and they know it. Traffic rules mean nothing to them and they've no issue with anything up to and including murder either. They feel like gods because they know no-one will do anything. Even Freddy isn't immune to corruption. He drinks and drives and he looks the other way when he discovers the truth of the shooting. Him and his deputies harrass black people driving past (it's not hard to notice the town is all white). The town has infected him and he knows it and needs it to stop.
The cast is amazing. Stallone of course blows away all the baggage brought with him from his He-Man days of the 80's. A fantastically conflicted Ray Liotta as Gary Figgis, a cop torn in two by his own conscience. Harvey Keitel oozing pure malice as the beyond corrupt Ray Donlan, the de facto leader of the town., Annabella Sciorra is heartbreaking as Liz, the woman Freddy loves but who is married to a cop and Robert De Niro on his best parroty form as an Internal Affairs member who won't give up. Then there's the supporting cast. Michael Rapaport, a pre stardom Edie Falco, Cathy Moriarty, Robert Patrick in absolute bastard form, Jeanne Garafalo, Paul Calderon, Noah Emmerich, Method Man, Peter Berg and numerous faces from tv shows like The West Wing and The Sopranos. Every speaking part is someone you'll recognise. It's an immense cast for a director only on his second feature.
It's Freddy's film though and he is a real honest to goodness cinema hero. He's overcome his disability to make something of himself. He's far smarter and accomplished than anyone gives him credit for. And when it comes down to it he has the balls to do the right thing and take on evil by himself. He's a Will Kane for the turn of the Millennium. A Rooster Cogburn. A modern day Wyatt Earp. Copland may feel like a mish mash of genres, police drama, thriller, gangster movie, conspiracy story but at it's heart it's a western. One good man standing up against the nonsense. Cars instead of horses. Pump action shotguns instead of Winchester repeating rifles. Even the name of the town, Garrison, conjures up an image of a frontier outpost. The climax of the film evokes High Noon. Stallone as Gary Cooper's Will Kane, left alone by cowardly friends and counting down the hours before he must do his duty by facing off against the enemy all on his own. Imagine this film as an actual western. It's easy to see James Stewart as Freddy, Walter Brennan as a cowardly fellow cop, Grace Kelly as Liz, a gruff Ben Johnson as Ray Donlan and L.Q. Jones and Lee Van Cleef as his sidekicks. The story is timeless.
It's a gem of a film and one that's aged beautifully in the 21 years since it's release. Give it a whirl if you haven't seen it. I think you'll love it.
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