Rampart (6/10)

January 3rd, 2012

Author James Ellroy’s early books were all basically variations on the same theme. Morally ambiguous cops meting out justice in a way only they saw fit, they regarded rules as being only for pansies. Just get ‘er done, and never mind how. These conflicted, some might say corrupt cops were especially hard on those who harmed women. Ellroy openly admits that his, shall we say, unusual childhood (his mother, a prostitute, was murdered) affected his psyche and therefore his writing. Rampart sees Ellroy reprise his earlier work with suitable sordidness and an appropriate antihero in ‘Date Rape’ Dave Brown.

Twenty-four years Dave’s been in the LAPD. Straight from Vietnam. Details redacted. Now he’s in Rampart Division: good guys in name only. He got the police sobriquet some years back. He might’ve shot an unarmed suspect, a guy who could’ve date-raped young girls and lots of them. If you’re a single girl in a bar Dave’ll tell you the story. He’ll sleep with you too. Sure he’s married – to his ex-wife’s sister, no less, and a daughter from each – but fuck it. Any hole’s a goal.

Date Rape Dave got blindsided – WHAM! – by a guy. The guy skedaddled. Date Rape Dave chased him. He beat him - hard. There were cameras. Date Rape Dave’s all over the news.

The people want justice. They want blood. They smell blood. It smells good. Date Rape Dave can give blood. Assistant DA Joan Confrey (Sigourney Weaver) can feed it to them. All Dave’s got to do is cop to it. Date Rape Dave prowls, he postures, he PROSETYLIZES. Out on the streets again, Dave (Woody Harrelson) gets the tip-off: There’s a big-money poker game. Be there.

Now there’s two scandals.

Dammit. I can’t write like Ellroy.

Harrelson hated this movie the first time he saw it, and I can easily understand why. His Brown is a horrendous character, so screwed up over time as to have no comprehension as to what’s right and what’s wrong. His only credo is the protection of women, despite the fact that he doesn’t know how to do so. Brown keeps his wife and ex-wife (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon) in the same house like a cosy family because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. That’s not working out too well. ‘You’re a classic racist, a bigot, a sexist, a womaniser, a chauvinist, a misanthrope, homophobic’ he is told – by his daughter. Brown affects an untouchable swagger while in uniform, but at home he’s a mess.

Rampart is the second collaboration (after 2009's rather good The Messenger) of Harrelson and director Oren Moverman, who also co-wrote with Ellroy. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that Moverman’s contribution was to reign in Ellroy’s prose which has a tendency to be too sprawling for its own good. Decent amounts of pruning are required in order to successfully convert it to film, and only Curtis Hanson’s LA Confidential has achieved the job effectively. Rampart is a pretty strong second best, refusing to pander to its audience by making its antihero heroic in any way. Knowing Ellroy’s work as well as I do, I’m guessing Moverman had to sanitize it also which, if true, would make the original transcript pretty bloody grubby.

Moverman’s direction, though, left as sour a taste in my mouth as the actions of the main character. Swirling round its subject or adopting oblique positions – in one scene it is placed behind the eye-holes of a pair of curtains – the directorial style is every bit as key as the characters it films and for my money it was distracting to the point of irritation. A visit to a sex club was a particular low point.

Get past that, though, and you’ve got a decent character study of a guy who’s been playing the game so long that he’s forgotten the rules. Brown protests his innocence continually, even to himself and his family. He’s a dinosaur, a symbol of old-time LAPD. You could easily imagine him pepper-spraying Occupy protesters.