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7/23/2014

Cop Land (1997) - Stallone faces corruption and turns in some good acting in fine crime drama



+ Best Crime Drama of the Year


Big leading men on the poster for James Mangold's Cop Land


QUICK REVIEW:

A taciturn cop in Garrison, New Jersey (Sylvester Stallone (First Blood (1982)) will have to be stumped on his feet many times, before he decides to clean up his town.
Cop Land is a very well-played cop crime thriller with a dream cast who all worked for scale to make it happen: Harvey Keitel (The Piano (1993)), Robert Patrick (The Sopranos (2000)), Robert De Niro (Casino (1995)) and Ray Liotta (Goodfellas (1990)) are some of the dirty cops, but Stallone trumps them all in his best acting performance to date. 
The film is well-written and directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line (2005)), who is unfortunately now fixed on throwing years of his career away into yet another superfluous Wolverine film. Before Cop Land, Mangold had only made one other feature, the romantic drama Heavy (1995).
Cop Land may not be unforgettable, but SPOILER the shoot-out at the end with the tinnitus is hard to forget and has real power, and it is a fine movie.
Paradoxically, considering its relatively small budget, this was a star-studded Miramax production with some very high pressure on its shoulders, and although it received good reviews and made money, it still wasn't considered enough. Stallone went out in 2008 to say that Cop Land "hurt" his career and started "the beginning of the end, for about 8 years". He's back in business now, and it's curious to think that he thought himself down for those 8 years considering the credits he still have from the period, but now, apparently, Stallone wants to risk career-slump again, because he is venturing out of the action genre for some 'real' acting again now in John Herzfeld's upcoming Reach Me (2014).

 

Related post:

 

1997 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess


Sylvester Stallone gained 40 lbs. to play Sheriff Freddy Heflin in James Mangold's Cop Land


Watch the trailer here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 44.8 mil. $ (US and Canada only)
= Big hit

What do you think of Cop Land?

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