Product Details

• Actors: Woody Harrelson, Robin Wright, Steve Buscemi, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Foster
• Directors: Oren Moverman
• Format: Blu-ray, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Millennium Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: May 15, 2012
• Run Time: 107 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B007AJMC4Q
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,087 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Review

4 STARS!! Woody Harrelson is leaner in Rampart, the skin tight over the skull, the jawline defiant. His eyes are busy. He is a cop in the Los Angeles police district that became notorious in 1999 as a cesspool of corruption, but this man takes corruption with him wherever he goes. The movie is co-written by the unsurpassed crime writer James Ellroy, who no doubt knows enough stories about Rampart to write a dozen movies, but his inspiration here is to make this cop a stand-alone character study, isolated within himself. He doesn't require the reprehensible environment of Rampart. He's self-fueled. Harrelson is an ideal actor for the role. Especially in tensely wound-up movies like this, he implies that he's looking at everything and then watching himself looking. His character, Dave Brown, has no moral center, but he has the survival instincts of a rat, and I say that with all due respect for rats. He always likes to know the way out of a tight corner. He knows an angle he can play or a squirm he can call on. Why is he this way? That question helps explain why the movie is so absorbing, because there is no answer. Rampart lacks the usual plot engines behind crime films, in which motivation comes from money, lust or revenge. Brown behaves in this film primarily just to do bad things. He reminds me of one of the most evil characters in American fiction, Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, a man who likes to torture and kill for no other reason than simply to cause pain. The Harrelson of Rampart could play Judge Holden, and not many actors could. He is an overt racist. He has such contempt for women he cannot always be bothered to use them sexually. He was married to two women (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) who are sisters, and apparently this meant so little to all of them that they live in houses next to one another. There was no emotional commitment there for them to engage. He has a daughter by each and is said to have once murdered a rapist because of his feelings for his daughters. Only with a man like Brown would you suspect that was an excuse; more likely, he got started killing the man and didn't feel like stopping. It's that feeling that seems to empower Brown when he does the last thing Rampart district needs in 1999. Eight years after the brutality against Rodney King, Brown is videotaped while beating a suspect. He seems to approach this task like a skilled workman performing a job he loves. Recently there's been a movement to make videotaping of police officers illegal. That would get Dave Brown's vote. This time he doesn't seem to have an escape route ready. The district attorney's office sees him as an ideal target, and Sigourney Weaver is finely focused as an assistant DA who has him in her sights. He also makes the error of trying to pick up a defense attorney (Robin Wright) in just the wrong way at just the wrong time. And he casually insults a black investigator for Internal Affairs (Ice Cube). Rampart is deeply embedded in Los Angeles in the summertime, every day a reminder of the desert that waits patiently to take back the land stolen from it by sprinkler systems. It is hot, the sun is blinding, Brown is sweating, he feels rotten. You cannot live forever with amorality and sadism eating away at you. Even other immoral people around you stand back, because they recognize themselves and fear to go that far. Rampart was directed and co-written with Ellroy by Oren Moverman, whose directorial debut was The Messenger(2009). It also starred Woody Harrelson, In that film, Harrelson's character turns out to have feelings after all. He's such a versatile actor, able to point one way and act in another. Maybe that's why he's so fascinating in Rampart. --Roger Ebert, Sun Times

Time's TOP 10 Movie Performances of 2011. #3 Woody Harrelson in Rampart. For eight years the blithely innocent bartender on Cheers, Woody Harrelson has matured into an actor of wide, weird range. As a media-savvy psycho in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, a porn king fighting for the First Amendment in The People vs. Larry Flynt, a Twinkies-addicted survivor in Zombieland and a bounty hunter in No Country for Old Men, Harrelson put a swagger in every scene, carving out a stark and engaging character: the wild American cowboy riding into the present on a stallion of lunatic machismo. His career topper may be playing Dave Date Rape Brown, an LAPD detective in director Oren Moverman's dark adaptation of a James Ellroy story. A dinosaur among the city's younger men and women in blue, Dave uses brutal methods to enforce the law; now he's under an investigation for beating a motorist, but he won't go down without a fatal fight. Harrelson, who's as worth watching at rest as when he detonates in calculated rage, pours such power into his character that viewers find themselves rooting for Dave even as they move to shield themselves from the imminent immolation. They become Dave's partners in crime, and Harrelson's willing, eager pawns. --Time Magazine

Product Description

At the heart of Oren Moverman's RAMPART is a riveting parable about what happens to a man who refuses to change, even when change is the only thing that can save him. That man is Dave Brown, played by two-time Academy Award® nominee Woody Harrelson. Though the film is set in the 1990s, when scandal rocked the LAPD's Rampart division, the film hones in on a single fictional cop: Dave Brown, a man who has taken the ''no guts, no glory'' American mythos to heart, without questioning what it is doing to him and those he holds dear. He is a cop whose personal life is propelled into a dizzying downward spiral when he comes under suspicion for roughing up a suspect. More than just a police officer who plays things fast and loose, Brown exposes the inner workings of a certain type of personality everyone recognizes around them, a personality very much part of American culture, yet not often examined. He is the kind of man inexorably drawn to authority and power, yet seems destined to abuse it; a man who has dreams of being a great masculine hero, yet is beholden to women; who has undeniable charm, yet whose stubborn refusal to take responsibility for his actions becomes a destructive force against family, community and ultimately himself.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Gritty cop drama... the utter loneliness of it all March 3, 2012

By Paul Allaer TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

"Rampart" (105 min.) brings the story of Dave Brown, an LA cop going off the tracks, played by Woody Harrelson in an outstanding perfomance. In the beginning of the movie, Brown tries to keep his personal life together, as complicated as it is with 2 kids he has from 2 women who happen to be sisters, and they are all living together. At a certain point, Brown gets involved in a car accident (accidental? set up?) and after the other driver tries to get away, he beats the driver exessively and just happens to get caught on tape.

Things get worse from there, and I don't want to give away much more from the plot, but suffice to say, Brown gets more and more isolated, even as he meets other women in his life. The whole movie is pretty much downbeat, and exposes the utter loniless of the Woody Harrelson character, leading eventually towards the open-ended conclusion of the movie.

The first hour was sorta long in the build-up, but the last 45 min. really shine. This movie has an incredible all-star cast besides Harrelson, with juice performances from Robin Wright, Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Heche, and Ice Cube. But special mention in my book goes to Brie Larson in the role of Harrelson's troubled teenage daughter. In all, quite a movie, although certainly not for everyone. Still, "Rampart" is highly recommended!

35 of 42 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Lead Performance Let Down by Weak Storytelling March 4, 2012

By Joshua Miller VINE™ VOICE

Format:Blu-ray

The tagline for Rampart reads "The most corrupt cop you've ever seen on screen," a statement which can only be true if you don't watch too many movies. Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is certainly a corrupt cop, but he's far from the most corrupt cop. Cops much more corrupt, more sympathetic and more compelling have been seen onscreen before. Chalk this up to a failure of marketing.

Rampart is the second film by Oren Moverman, following his brilliant 2009 film The Messenger. That film also starred Woody Harrelson, among several others in this cast, and scored him an Oscar nomination. This nomination likely arose from his strengths as an actor, as well as the strengths of the film. Had Rampart been a stronger film he may have gotten a deserved nomination for his work here too. Moverman co-wrote the screenplay with James Ellroy, the well-regarded crime novelist who knows his way around police-driven Los Angeles stories. The film succeeds in presenting its main character as an amoral cop without reason. Dave Brown is not driven by the typical conventions of a corrupt cop movie, existing as he is for no discernible reason. That's certainly an interesting twist, but not everything else falls together so perfectly.

The setting is Los Angeles, circa 1999. Dave Brown is a controversial figure around the police department, having allegedly murdered a serial date rapist years earlier, earning him the nickname "Date Rape Dave." His home life isn't any more conventional. He has two daughters, born to two sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) who regard him passively. Things begin to implode when Dave beats a motorist who has wrecked into his car and is caught on tape. An investigation is launched which threatens Dave's entire way of living.

Many familiar faces fill the supporting roles. The film co-stars Sigourney Weaver, Ice Cube, Robin Wright, Steve Buscemi, and an unrecognizable Ben Foster. It's Harrelson and his gaunt appearance that stand out the most. This is a blistering performance, possibly his best, with much more depth than the film itself.

Rampart is well-made with some great acting, but it fails to fully engage. In presenting a character with no moral center it fails to give the audience an emotional center to latch onto. Certainly it does try to make Dave Brown sympathetic with the smallest amount of contrivance as possible, but watching it feels like going through the motions. Nothing in the film feels powerful enough. The ending especially is a point of complaint. As is increasingly typical with independent films, there isn't much of an ending. There's nothing wrong with an abrupt conclusion when it makes a poignant statement about what's lead up to it, but here it feels inappropriate. There's not enough closure. Whatever Moverman and Ellroy were trying to say about their character hasn't come full-circle.

This is a forgettable movie with a performance at the center of it that deserves better. The screenplay is what ultimately fails the film as it feels like Moverman shot the first draft. A bit of polishing, refining the edges may have worked in the film's favor. While Harrelson is given the chance to explore untainted areas of his acting range and that's something worth seeing, you may ultimately walk away from Rampart wishing it was more conventional.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not What It Looked Like May 22, 2012

By L. Mcenroe

Format:Amazon Instant Video

The trailer/preview is the best part of the movie. Harrelson is great, but there is no "tense" "action" really in the film. A couple of gritty moments, but that's it and a lot of unresolved plot lines that go nowhere. It doesn't even have the decency to spiral all the way downward and end in some kind of self-implosion or something. Anything.