Plot

Sylvester Stallone plays Freddy Heflin who is a local sheriff of a town just across the river from New York City. Heflin always wanted to be a cop in the Big Apple, but as he is partially deaf he can’t. The town is home of many New York City policemen and is referred to as ‘Cop Land’. Accordingly, the crime rate in Cop Land is practically non-existent and Freddy’s time is taken up by dealing with minor matters.

As the story continues Heflin begins to realise that some of the residents of Cop Land are members of a network which operates beyond the law. Gradually the scraps of evidence provided to Freddy and his own investigations lead him to the conclusion that much of Cop Land is really a front for crime and deception. This results in an ultimate showdown between Heflin and the cops he idolises.

Verdict

This is a very good movie, which in my opinion does not get the credit it deserves. James Mangold assembles a superb cast and the story is absorbing in its portrayal of a secret society of policemen who are a law unto themselves - for these guys are involved in inter alia drugs, murder and corruption. It has been argued that with the star power (Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta) on show the film does not live up to expectation. However, perhaps this view is held by those who fail to appreciate a Stallone’s stand out performance, which overshadows the other protagonists. Ironically by the end of the film both Stallone and his character Freddy Heflin have proved that they have what it takes to live with their contemporaries.

Many people see Silvester Stallone as just another action movie hero who can't do anything but that. However, unlike other action movie stars, (Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Seigal etc..) Stallone made his breakthrough with a movie that wasn't really an action movie at heart. He gave forth an excellent performance in Rocky and set a standard for himself that just seemed to fall and fall as his career progressed. He starred in cheesy action movie role after cheesy action movie role until finally people began associating him with nothing but that. Now finally, over twenty years after Rocky, Stallone comes back and shows people that he can be more than an action hero if he wants to. Stallone's performance in Cop Land shows vulnerability, anger, admiration, fear and many other emotions that were rarely present in any of his movie except Rocky. I'm sorry to say that I was one of the many people who took Cop Land for granted when it came to theaters simply because I didn't believe Stallone could do anything but cheesy action movies. Today, I finally rented it out of pure curiosity and was shocked at how far I was from the truth.

Cop Land is a very well made film about a small town that corrupt New York City cops have made their haven. Stallone plays the sheriff of the town, Freddy Heflin, who wanted to be NYPD but couldn't due to a hearing disorder. When Murray 'Superboy' Babitch (Michael Rapaport) shoots and kills two drugged up teenagers when he mistakes a steering wheel club for a gun in a high speed chase, his friends come in to help him. But their far-fetched plan starts to come down on them when Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) from Internal Affairs begins investigating Superboy's alleged suicide. Things begin to go seriously wrong from here and Freddy is caught right in the middle. I thought that Stallone would have been upstaged by all his great co-stars like Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro, but I was wrong. Stallone comes out perfectly as an aging cop with smashed dreams faced with a moral dilemma he doesn't know how to solve. In many ways he idolizes these big time New York cops but he knows that many of the things they do are wrong. In many ways Stallone's performance is far superior to that of his co-stars as he exhibits more depth and character development than any of them.

Cop Land is a somewhat unknown gem that many people overlooked for the wrong reasons. If you have any interest in the genre I would highly recommend it. Cop Land is probably the second best police murder/crime drama I've seen, only behind L.A. Confidential. At times the story has something to be desired and unlike L.A. Confidential is drags in some parts but the fantastic performances by every cast member more than make up for these minor flaws. I give Cop Land 8 stars out of 10.