Latest Movie Review For Rampart

Posted by Charmaine Blake on Feb 22nd, 2012 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Latest Movie Review For Rampart

Rampart gave audiences and critics a whole new story and performance brought by Woody Harrelson. Woody Harrelson plays a bad cop in the movie, Rampart. There’s been lot of people who gave thumbs up when it comes to the actor and screenplay of the movie. Here’s the latest movie review for Rampart brought to you by Mick LaSalle:

Woody Harrelson: A Perfect Character In Rampart

“Drama. Starring Woody Harrelson, Robin Wright, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon. Directed by Oren Moverman. (R. 107 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Director Oren Moverman understands that Woody Harrelson is a real actor and makes movies to prove it. Where other directors see comic facility and zaniness, he sees complexity, turbulence and trouble. He sees past the facade of high spirits, and in “Rampart,” as in “The Messenger,” he gives Harrelson a chance to go into the pain and into the dark. Harrelson comes back with a performance that illuminates and justifies the movie.

“Rampart” is a grim piece of work about a really bad Los Angeles cop with a history of violence. He roughs up suspects, shakes down pharmacists to supply himself with drugs and isn’t above pulling holdups of his own when he needs cash. He kills people, sometimes because he thinks they’re guilty, sometimes because they have something on him.

Some of this will sound familiar to those who’ve seen Abel Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” (1992). But Ferrara’s masterpiece had an operatic grandeur about it, the sense of an epic spiritual struggle playing out inside one damaged soul. “Rampart” is more secular and less ambitious and thus has less at stake. It’s frankly less of a movie, but within its scope, as the portrait of a particular guy – steeped in violence, riding in his car listening to talk radio, and convinced that he is a knight on the front lines of civilization – it has its own fascination.

The best thing Harrelson brings is his own sweetness of disposition, which somehow never goes completely into hiding. It’s most apparent in the scenes inside his household, a crazy setup in which he lives with two ex-wives who happen to be sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) and a daughter from each marriage. His place within the family mirrors his place without it: He sees himself as a flawed but protective presence, when in reality he has little to offer. He is, in fact, the needy one, and no one is really interested in his needs.

Harrelson’s achievement is in roping all the various strains of this character – the gentleness, the warmth, the brutality, the canniness, the cluelessness – into one coherent (and oddly engaging) personality. The scenes of violence are effective but few. Mainly “Rampart” plays out in two-person scenes, involving Harrelson and a series of terrific actresses. We find, in addition to Heche and Nixon, Robin Wright as a mystery woman he meets in a bar, Sigourney Weaver as an internal affairs investigator and even Audra McDonald as a one-night stand.”

You can read the rest of the article at San Francisco Chronicle

Browse through other “Crime” films coming soon right in this blog.

Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.