COP LAND (1997) ** The first half is much better than the second, where lack of realism fails to mask the reality that James Mangold ran out of good ideas. It's an incredible cast, though. Robert De Niro probably wins, waving his arms around with a sandwich, but Ray Liotta gets the intensity award. Why is it, anyway, that Liotta is so often portraying a coke fiend, and always so good at it? Harvey Keitel throws out the Nicholsonesque "you're too dumb to access higher truth" speech. Sylvester Stallone is credible in the lead, a less than brilliant man who eventually comes to realize that he's enabling evil through disengagement. Annabella Sciorra keeps trying to insinuate herself into the plot but she can't figure out where she should go, and neither can Mangold. I mean, I'm with Mangold on the fundamentals: I have no difficulty believing that cops are the most racist and inherently dishonest element of American society (with the probable exception of appellate court judges); and it should be obvious to everyone that cops, organized crime and the corporate puppetmasters...they're not necessarily the same people, but let's just say that many of them share some common interests. Like money. And maintaining the status quo. So, halfway through, it was a film that really had an opportunity to go somewhere--to be more real than whatever truths may seep out regarding similar actual events. Instead it just falls apart...I mean, what? A bad cop turns into a good cop to save a bad cop by killing four bad cops, or what? Where's that get you? What's the moral to that? Where's the entertainment? Yeah, that's right, maybe that's the realistic part. Ah, I dunno, good cops, bad cops, fighting criminals, both, being criminals also...my complaint isn't that it's never as confused as this. It always is. That's also my complaint.
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