Customer Reviews

Cop Land(Blu-Ray)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The movie is one of my favorite Cop movies of all time. I give it five stars. Yet the Blu-Ray version that I ordered on Amazon.com is in Blu-Ray format but the picture is far from HD. There are no features at all on this disc. I felt as if I were watching a bootleg video on the internet.

Of course this movie has a great cast, but for some reason it was never properly promoted. Several stand out performances, especially from Stallone and Liotta(probably his best since "Goodfellas"). I think a lot of people who watch this movie think it's going to be like Rocky meets Goodfellas(especially K-Dawg) but this film doesn't take the easy way out and gives you an original story with conviction. De Niro's roll is very minimal, so don't expect to see him a lot, but if you like good movies with great acting, you won't be disappointed.

Only once in a blue moon do we get to have this amazing cast in one film. Cop Land has it. I mean Stallone, De Niro, Kitel, Liotta in one movie? But it is really beyond that. It is a movie that really shows the great abilities that all these actors have. Sylvester Stallone in particular, gives a truly amazing performance. He gains a lot of weight to play the role of Sherrif Freddy. This is one thing that not many actors can do. I really admire Sylvester Stallone for what he did in order to play this role and he did a very good job. Just the intensity and the interactions that we see from all these great actors, will keep you on the edge of your seat. Totally recommended.

Great cast in a murder-thriller with plenty of red herrings along the way. The cast is a great group that recall the chemistry of GOOD FELLAS except the high crime is in a small town instead of New York. Really hard to seperate the good guys from the bad and surprise! with this cast you even like the bad! Well done!

After the Rocky film franchise "ended" (at least for the time being) in 1990, Sylvester Stallone starred in a few clunkers (Demolition Man & Judge Dredd being first and foremost) that really put a drag on his reputation for being a serious actor outside of Rocky/Rambo flicks. In 1997, though, Stallone signed on for a much more dramatic turn in "Cop Land", and actually garnered some decent reviews from the critics. Unfortunately, I'm here to tell you to ignore those high marks...this is one of the most boring films you will ever watch.

Basically, the plot of this film centers on the town of Garrison, a police officer-prolific community that seems to have a bit of a shady past. All it takes is a little incident on the force, then, to finally spur Sheriff Freddy Heflin (Stallone) into action to set things right by exposing the corruption.

At face value, that cop-conspiracy plot isn't all that terrible if you can get into that kind of stuff. The glaring problem, however, is this: an astounding lack of interesting characters. For the plot of the movie to really suck viewers in, you have to be able to hate the bad guys and at least root for the good guys. I was completely ambivalent to both causes. The corrupt cops are completely two-dimensional (no interesting side plots or character quandaries to make you think), and that is more that can be said about Stallone's Heflin, who is easily one of the most uninspiring "heroes" I've ever seen up on the big screen.

Thus, with a cast of decent characters this could have been a much better overall effort. As it were, though, acting talents such as Stallone, Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, and Robert Patrick were completely wasted by a script that didn't allow them to develop. For an alternative, I would highly recommend Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River", roughly in the same genre as "Cop Land" but oh so much more interesting.