08/15/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Cop Land
An arresting police story

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

***** (out of five)
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Peter Berg, Janeane Garofalo, Robert Patrick, Michael Rapaport, Annabella Sciorra, Noah Emmerich, Cathy Moriarty. A Miramax Films release written and directed by James Mangold. Rated R, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 105 minutes.

A shootout on the George Washington Bridge that leaves two men dead and the off-duty cop who shot them jumping over the side is the trigger that sets off the hyper, explosive Cop Land.

Before it's over in James Mangold's multi-layered suspense thriller, there will be many more killings, a murder gone haywire, a deadly firebombing, men on the run across rooftops and a corruption probe into the mob ties to an entire New York City police precinct and to the small New Jersey town where the stumblebum sheriff finally gets his chance to crack a great big case.

Cop Land is also a great big boost for Sylvester Stallone, who plumped on 30 pounds to play Sheriff Freddy Heslin in his attempt to revive a faltering movie career. Stallone goes up against the likes of Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and enough colorful secondary characters to populate two movies and creates a sympathetic character who develops moxie and gets a shot at modern-day High Noon heroics.

Long used to solving such local crises as speeders and misplaced garbage bags, Freddy has always looked the other way when it comes to the doings of the many New York City police officers who live in his town. The cops have finagled a way to live away from the city's dirt and crime, yet be close enough to stay in sight of the city's lights just across the Hudson River. They, not he, run the close-knit town of Garrison. They provide the coverups for each other. Freddy wishes he could be like them.

A childhood dream of being a New York cop seemed within his reach, until the day Freddy saved a local teen beauty queen from drowning -- an event seen again and again throughout the film -- and lost the hearing in one ear. Now he's the local sheriff, a joke in a three-cop town who spends nights playing video games at the 4 Aces bar where the New York cops hang out, dreaming of his lost possibilities and wishing that he could have married the teen queen instead of the philandering New York cop who did and who makes her life miserable. At best, Freddy's the peacemaker between the petty bickerings of the New York cops.

Clearly there's a lot more going on in Cop Land than the old good cop-bad cop plots of a dozen police movies. Freddy is a well-meaning but oafish lawman whose awe of his brother officers puts him at a distance from them. He's like the kid standing at the edge of the playground who's never invited to play the game. There are some touching moments in which Freddy looks longingly at Manhattan, glittering across the river like Oz . . . so near, yet so untouchable.



Frustrating relationship

Untouchable, too, is Liz Randone (Annabella Sciorra). Freddy saved her once from drowning. Now, when he tries to save her from her loutish husband, Joey (Peter Berg), she seeks and needs his comfort. Yet she discreetly pulls away from anything closer than the professional relationship between a cop and a victim. She's frustrated. He's frustrated.

Frustrated most of all is Ray Donlan (Keitel), sort of the godfather of the 37th Precinct cops who've moved to Garrison. Ray's curt bluster and paternalism, tempered by a killing edginess, make you think he knows where all the bodies are buried . . . and wants to keep them buried. One of those bodies, it's more than hinted, belonged to a cop named Tunney, who was gunned down in a cell when he was about to spill the beans on some bit of corruption that came too close to Ray. Now Ray finds it difficult to look the murdered guy's partner, Gary Figgis (Liotta), in the eye.

That leaves Figgis as a loose cannon on the fringes of Ray's court, taunting him to strike out. Figgis fears that he's been fingered by Ray and his cronies, who hold court in the 4 Aces, because he knows too much about the strange case of that reckless young cop, Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Michael Rapaport), who went over the side of the George Washington Bridge . . . or did he? Talk is that Murray is still alive and hiding out somewhere in Garrison, that Ray knows all about it and that Ray now wants out because crackerjack police Internal Affairs investigator Moe Tilden (De Niro) is digging deep into the case.

And that's just the setup. There's so much going on in Cop Land that it might seem you'd need a road map, but Mangold sets out the story plainly, though not so easily that the audience doesn't have to work at it a little. There are subtle hints dropped about who is doing what to whom, characters who appear suddenly -- like Cathy Moriarty as Ray's blowsy peroxided wife -- to spit out veiled lines hinting at hanky-panky.

Freddy, who has a childlike view of right and wrong, slowly begins fitting the pieces together. And so do we. Some of those pieces don't fit together as neatly as one might think, however. And even when Freddy gets a sudden burst of civic duty, it doesn't pan out the way he or we might think it will. There are too many people in high places with too many friends who don't want the truth spilling out.



Freddy a tragic figure

Stallone beautifully underplays Freddy, a tragic figure who's often photographed with the lights of the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan behind him. Freddy, living on his might-have-beens, is the underdog who finally gets his smarts and seizes his chance. It's Stallone's strongest and most human-scale character since Rocky Balboa, a figure with whom Freddy shares more than a few similarities. And as he did with Rocky, Stallone gallops off with the role.

The rest of the cast is powerful and terrific, too, coming together in fine ensemble playing. De Niro makes Moe such a hard-nosed stickler, who prods Freddy to action with toughness and smarts, that he's a presence even when off screen. Keitel's Ray is a frightening, take-no-prisoners character, someone who'd commit murder to save himself.

Liotta, one of the stars of GoodFellas, uses his goodfella cheerfulness as a breakaway player in Ray's court who hides more secrets than he'd care to have anyone know. Robert Patrick and Arthur J. Nascarella are coolly scary as Ray's cold-blooded henchmen.

Sciorra scores in the empathetic role of Liz, who finally takes a stand against her husband's lies. Moriarty makes the tiny role of Ray's weary wife memorable for her behind-the-scenes schemes. Rapaport is unnerving as the young cop who messed up and tries to flee. Janeane Garofalo registers as the sheriff's new recruit who is overwhelmed by the corruption of one little town.

Mangold, whose previous feature was the little-seen but critically praised independent film Heavy, keeps all these characters, who collide and snipe and trick each other, on a level course. This is gut-level filmmaking, unprettified and stark with characters who strike out suddenly in surprising fury.

They're painted in bold strokes, and so is Cop Land.