| Cop Land |
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| DVD Mystery-Suspense | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Abbie Bernstein | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 20 May 1998 | ||||||||||||||||||||
'Cop Land' is perhaps best viewed as 'High Noon' transplanted to contemporary New Jersey. Garrison, NJ is populated largely by NYPD cops who want to raise their families in the suburbs and who have found away around the ordinance decreeing that they must live within New York City limits. With all those blue uniforms in residence, Garrison has a low crime rate, but there's something nasty under the surface. Sheriff Freddy Heflin (Stallone) stumbles onto a tangled mess involving the killing of a police officer and the faked death of another. Although initially reluctant to think the worst of his policeman idols--or, more to the point, to make enemies of his powerful, armed neighbors--Freddy tries to create a peaceful solution to a volatile situation, but things quickly get out of hand. Stallone, who both put on weight and lobbied hard for the role, is quite persuasive as a soft, unaggressive figure. His Freddy is so convincingly resigned and used to sitting on the sidelines (there's not much for a sheriff to do in law-abiding Garrison) that when he finally goes for a gun, the moment is more jolting than obligatory. He holds his own with Harvey Keitel as the king of the local schemers and Robert De Niro as an exasperated Internal Affairs man. Writer/director James Mangold creates dialogue that flows easily and dramatic situations that seem plausible. He does observe the staples of the genre, but the shootouts are few-and-far between. The largest burst of action is saved for the finale in Chapter 13, which also boasts the film's most interesting and disturbing sound effect: simulating the aftermath of hearing loss, a keen aural whine slices straight through both the ambient sound and the music track. Primarily, though, Mangold is more a storyteller than an image-framer and he's good at his chosen craft. Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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