Rampart (film)

This article is about Rampart (film). For other uses, see Rampart.

Rampart
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Oren Moverman
Produced by	Michael DeFranco Ben Foster Lawrence Inglee Ken Kao Clark Peterson
Screenplay by	James Ellroy Oren Moverman
Story by	James Ellroy
Starring	Woody Harrelson Ice Cube Ned Beatty Anne Heche Steve Buscemi Sigourney Weaver
Music by	Dickon Hinchliffe
Cinematography	Bobby Bukowski
Editing by	Jay Rabinowitz
Studio	Amalgam Features
Distributed by	Millennium Entertainment
Release date(s)	September 10, 2011 (2011-09-10) (TIFF) February 10, 2012 (2012-02-10) (United States)
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1,543,613

Rampart is a drama film released in 2011. Directed by Oren Moverman and co-written by Moverman and James Ellroy, the film stars Woody Harrelson and Ice Cube. In the midst of the fallout from the Rampart scandal of the 1990s, dirty LAPD veteran Dave Brown is forced to face up to the consequences of his wayward career. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2011.

Plot

Officer Dave Brown (Harrelson) has two ex-wives who are sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) and he cheated on both. Brown has a daughter from each marriage which creates conflict at home. However, the film starts with his other home, which is the beat. Dave patrols streets occupied by gangs. Dave forcibly obtains a confession out of a convenience store thief. Later he is caught on tape beating someone almost to death. The beating is still playing on TV when he's involved in a suspicious shooting. These incidents get Dave in trouble with the already beleaguered department, and he faces either sanctions or forced retirement. Dave tries to talk his way out of trouble with an assistant district attorney (Sigourney Weaver). Dave realizes that his superiors are less concerned about what he has done but more concerned about the public embarrassment he has created by getting caught.

Awards

African American Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor
Nominated – Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead
Nominated – Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture

Marketing

The marketing team behind Rampart posted controversial posters in several major U.S. cities before the movie was released showing Woody Harrelson’s character, Officer Dave Brown, beating a man with a night stick. The posters simply stated “I WORK FOR YOU” and were meant to look like street art posters. Oren Moverman, the Director of Rampart, said one of the producers had been "searching for an image that would be thought-provoking and challenging, not an indictment of a cop but rather a communal approach to the idea of policing, the idea that maybe when cops do bad things it’s more of a reflection of society and what it is willing to tolerate rather than the fault of one bad apple or an institutional problem. If they work for us, could it be they ARE us?"

Woody Harrelson conducted several interviews to promote the film. In one interview with "The Playlist," Woody indicated "I had a period where I saw an early cut of the movie and didn't go for it, mainly because it was so different from the script and what we shot." Woody also lost significant weight to prepare for the role. During the same interview, Woody communicated "I lost 30 pounds and a part of it was that I felt like he would have this relationship to food which is very similar to his relationship with women." Woody's take on the character was the following: "He can't really accept love, and if the food were representative of love. It's his inability to take that affection and nourishment." Woody went on to say about the character he played, "I would say if one emotion that is most at play with Dave Brown it would be paranoia. So that emotion was kind of with me quite a bit during the filming."

An attempt to market the film via the social news website Reddit went "horribly wrong" according to Forbes. A popular feature of Reddit is the "IAmA" section, where people are encouraged to "ask me anything". Within this format, Harrelson agreed to answer questions from the users of the site, who were disappointed by his answers, and his apparent misunderstanding of the format, resulting in some of the site's users vowing to "boycott the flick". CNET characterized one of Harrelson's responses as "sheer oozing, all-about-me-ism". Josh Feldman with MediaIte shared the following perspective: "a proxy for the actor basically gave vague answers to half of the questions and in-no-way subtle plugs for his upcoming movie Rampart to the other half. It was a public relations nightmare, and while it certainly raised awareness about the movie, it definitely backfired." Josh went on to say about the incident, "it came across as robotic and represented an inability to connect with people when it should have been insanely easy to do so." Josh summarized the lesson learned by stating the following, "When you’re doing an AMA on Reddit, you drop the act and engage with real people. Some will be fans, some won’t, but if you’re just honest and it doesn’t seem like your answers have been planned out, people will respect you for it."

Cast

• Woody Harrelson as Dave Brown
• Ned Beatty as Hartshorn
• Ben Foster as "General" Terry
• Anne Heche as Catherine
• Ice Cube as Kyle Timkins
• Cynthia Nixon as Barbara
• Sigourney Weaver as Joan Confrey
• Robin Wright as Linda Fentress
• Steve Buscemi as Bill Blago
• Brie Larson as Helen
• Don Creech as Head Shark Lawyer
• Jon Bernthal as Dan Morone
• Robert Wisdom as the Captain

Critical reception

Ramparts received mixed-to-fair reviews, with a 74% positive rating by the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

External links

• Rampart at the Internet Movie Database
• Rampart at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rampart at AllRovi