Rampart (2011)

Directed by Oren Moverman
Written by James Ellroy, Oren Moverman
Starring Woody Harrelson, Robin Wright, Anne Heche, Ned Beatty, Ice Cube


I've been sloppy, yes.  I've not been keeping this blog going.  The reasons... oh, you don't want to know the reasons (there aren't any, but if there were, you wouldn't want to know; this is a film blog, after all).  Anyway, I've not updated it in ages, not since The Artist.  In the interim, The Artist has been hailed almost universally - aside from the inevitable backlash which comes with the universal hailing of anything - and won a sackful of awards, perhaps heralding in these troubled times a fondness for warm, cosy, lovely, utterly charming pictures.  Simple pictures that set out to warm the cockles of our hearts, and achieve that aim marvellously.

Rampart didn't win any awards.  The reception has been mixed, to say the least.  It doesn't warm the cockles of anyone's heart.  It's not a feelgood picture, it's not charming, it's not lovely, it's not cosy or delightful.  It's not a movie to ease a few hours of the difficult days in which we live.  Unremittingly bleak, cruel, vicious and despairing, without a real beginning and no end to speak of, Rampart spends its hundred minutes showing us the darkness as a constant theme - in a similar sense to the (admittedly superior) No Country for Old Men, cruelty and violence are with us throughout, they're not some abberation that springs up at the beginning of a movie and disappears in a burst of good-will-outing two hours later.

And if you can stand the constant, crushing negativity, there is a very fine film here.  In the right role, Woody Harrelson can be a very intense, engaging actor (indeed, he was in No Country for Old Men), and with barely a moment in the film when he's not on screen, this is a towering and powerful performance.  It's also a very interestingly put-together picture - only Moverman's second as a director* - and laudably well-paced and trim.  Rampart is not at all perfect - the relationship between the central character and his increasingly estranged family is rather hackneyed - but as a character study of unpleasantness in the line of duty, and one that leaves open the question of whether duty is an acceptable excuse, it's certainly worth watching.



*He has, however, had a longer career as a screenwriter - including the execrable I'm Not There, which couldn't be more different to Rampart.