Cop Land (1997)
“It’s just as easy to tail a man walking in front of him [...] you move diagonal, you jag.”
In the 1997 crime drama "Cop Land," directed by James Mangold, the story unfolds in Garrison, a small New Jersey town inhabited almost exclusively by New York City police officers and their families. Sylvester Stallone stars as Sheriff Freddy Heflin, deaf in one ear and yearning to prove himself as a cop, especially to the commuting NYPD officers. However, he finds himself engulfed in a tangled web of corruption. As Heflin investigates further, he must confront his own internal conflicts between loyalty, justice, and the unspoken code that binds cops together, ultimately risking his own life to protect the citizens of Cop Land.
The film, obviously, had a huge amount of anticipation around it, due to its stellar cast and the unique appearance of its lead, Sylvester Stallone, but whilst the film made a profit and had solid reviews upon its release (and has become increasingly popular on DVD and streaming sites), at the time it didn’t quite deliver on the promise of the acting equivalent of the Avengers, nor feed the monstrous appetite of Harvey Weinstein and his company Miramax, who produced the film. For Stallone, it marks a hugely interesting moment in his career. Clearly, an overt attempt to reposition the acting hero as a true actors actor; putting on weight, playing against type and being in a smaller scale drama, dare I say an ‘Independent Film’ (Miramax was owned by Disney from 1993, but they still managed to make their films feel independent from the bigger Hollywood studio output). If he made the film now, the audience would be primed for it, and in turn, would be more of an Oscar contender that Stallone was hoping for. Audiences were simply not ready to see Rambo/Rocky/Cobra lumber about spilling quarters out of parking meters, lose at Lethal Weapon pinball and be the village idiot. The impact can’t be a coincidence, whilst Stallone received plaudits for his performance at the time, his career stalled for almost a decade till he returned to Rocky and Rambo in 2006 and 2008 respectively.
Sylvester Stallone opened the season premiere of SNL in 1997, interesting how he mentions being ‘…it’s a time of my life where I’m taking chances with my career’.
It’s worth remembering that the 1997 US film industry was a very different landscape than it is today in 2023 too:
- The DVD market was about to become an industry-defining revenue stream, helping films find audiences (and studios, profits) even if they didn't make bank whilst on theatrical release. Allowing film studios to more readily make bets on smaller scale films, not your huge epics, nor small kitchen sink dramas (which had little financial risk) - these middle-level ~$50m films could easily be made up on the back end with DVD sales.
- Miramax still had Hollywood in its grip, not unlike Keitel's Ray Donlan.
- The Sopranos had yet to air (18 months later), which is now shorthand for 'Prestige TV hadn't kicked off yet', so film actors were still firmly focused on cinema to express themselves.
Robert De Niro, James Mangold and Sylvester Stallone, in the midst of shooting the now iconic ‘YOU BLEW IT!’ scene.
“I remember getting the idea for the movie while driving on the Palisades Parkway, and thinking about how to transpose a Western movie template onto what you might call a 1970s Sidney Lumet film — to make a film about these communities that were all interconnected, yet at war. I had this idea of a town that would exist and that would be similar to the town I grew up in — only exaggerated to be 100 percent cops. In many ways, obviously, it becomes a gross oversimplification, but sometimes oversimplifications can yield interesting analogies.”
James Mangold, who at 33, was inspired to create this script from his own upbringing in the Hudson Valley, seeing his school friends' parents working as cops or firemen and his friends having a very different experience growing up than him. Their parents were dying young either in the line of duty, or more usually from work-related stress, like heart disease. Politically there were differences too, Mangold said he felt distance from his friends as they held an almost tribal loyalty to a right-wing ideology, whilst Mangold, the son of two painters, had a more leftist point of view (as you would expect). This made him curious as to why.
This fish-out-of-water perspective led Mangold to extrapolate the idea of an entire community of NY cops, living this Ossie & Harriet lifestyle in the evenings and weekends, then commuting back into the city to be 9-5 cops trying desperately to keep crime out of their own neighbourhoods and keep it contained in New York.
“I was commuting a lot to my folks’ house and back to school at Columbia University. I kept passing through this landscape in which you had nearly all-white enclaves of itinerant armed forces that commuted via rail or car for a 9-to-5 week in a fairly intense place. This was the age of crack and AIDS, and there was a lot going on in New York at that time. The level of paranoia, fear, and anxiety was high. They’d leave the suburban bliss of their homes and travel to a place that felt to them like a war zone, and then they’d return to the VCR, a cold beer, a barbecue, and their neighbors in the evenings and on the weekends. That, I think, is crazy. Similarly on the other side, if you’re living in a community in the city, the people who are patrolling you are people who have no connection to you.”
“What the fuck is that? BBQ’s and ballgames?”
De Niro’s Macaulay in Heat (1995) reflects on a perceived ‘normal life’. A life that Cop Land’s Garrison was (supposedly) aspiring to be for the commuting NYPD.
The idea of police containing crime, rather than solving it, was also explored in HBO’s The Wire, in the iconic ‘Hamsterdam’ story arc, where the Baltimore PD proceeded with a de facto "legalisation" of drug trade within a few city blocks, with the aim to reduce broader crime in the rest of the city.
(Left to right) Sydnor, Colvin, McNulty and Greggs in Hamsterdam.
As a fun side note, linking to the Liotta/Figgsy quote around tailing someone whilst in front of them, The Wire served up a neat How-To with McNulty’s kids following Stringer Bell…
FX’s The Shield covered crime control with a more overt corruption angle, where Ben Gilroy, the Assistant Chief for the LAPD, who, through a woman, he was having an affair with, was positioning police resources away from certain areas to crash land value, then ‘buy up property in these areas like Disney’, then proceed to shift police back into those areas to increase property value to then sell at profit.
Legendary shitheel Ben Gilroy with iconic TV anti-hero, Vic Mackey.
Coming back to Cop Land, and the initial reason I wanted to write about it, was the question around ‘What is the best-cast film in cinema?’ and not ‘What is the best film (and cast) in cinema’? Like any subjective question, it’s not a question that can be answered easily, not without some strict rules anyway, but the idea that the 15th or 20th person on the cast list is a ‘face’ is a good place to start. It makes it a little harder to create a list. Cop Land (1997), JFK (1991) and the recent Oppenheimer (2023) all share a deep bench not unlike Fergie’s Manchester United in the 90’s. So perhaps it’s more like, ‘What film has the deepest bench in cinema?’. So when John Ventimiglia, (Artie from The Sopranos), is your ‘20th actor on the list’, or Paulie Walnuts stars as a photograph, you’ve got a great squad.
In the words of Richie Aprile, look at this fuckin’ line up.
Out of the above cast, a total of eleven of the actors have acted in The Sopranos, and Ray Liotta has his connection to the Chase saga playing "Hollywood Dick" Moltisanti and Salvatore "Sally" Moltisanti in The Many Saints of Newark (2021). My first thought was that Cop Land shared the same casting directors as The Sopranos, Sheila Jaffe and Georgianne Walken, but no, Cop Land was cast by Todd Thaler. Todd is NY-based, and obviously, it’s a fully East Coast production, so it makes sense it features actors all based there, rather than from L.A. In many of the Talking Sopranos podcast episodes, Michael Imperioli (who almost feels like he should be in Cop Land), often discusses the SUNY Purchase school where he met many of the actors on The Sopranos, so there’s that ‘feeder club’ in the mix. Finally, the Jersey connection and the broad ‘type’ or ‘look’ of the actors is so similar to The Sopranos, almost like it’s in the same narrative universe, just this time from the cop’s point of view, not the mob.
In a jam packed crowd of talent, in addition to strong performances from Sly, De Niro and Keitel, two performances really stand out.
Ray Liotta plays Gary ‘Figs’ Figgis, a highly conflicted NYPD cop, abusing drugs and alcohol who has a soft spot for Freddy. Figs was clearly once in Ray Donlan’s inner circle, but since the death (murder) of his partner, Tunny, who was close to exposing Donlan’s crimes, Figs saw the light and stepped away from Donlan. Tussling with that guilt, and assumed huge gambling debts, he’s on the precipice the whole time. He goes one better by burning his own house down, aided by Edie Falco’s bomb expert, Berta, to claim the insurance money, but then accidentally kills his girlfriend, Monica. The weight of guilt on Figs at this point seems unimaginable, but here lies one of Liotta’s strengths in expressing this trauma. You can really feel this conflict boiling inside him, whether in the loud outburst ramming a dart into Robert Patrick’s nose or continually trying to ‘train’ Freddy as a sort of conduit for repenting for his own sins. He needs Freddy to step up to the plate, as he would go to jail if the truth came out. When his $200k insurance check comes in, he wants to skip town and start his life over. In a fantastic Liotta scene where he’s ranting to himself in his car leaving Garrison, even telling himself to ‘Shut the fuck up! Would ya, please?”, as he’s wrestling with the choice to sneak away and be free, or help Freddy arrest Donlan and all his disciples, there is only one choice as he slams his feet onto the brakes and decides to return. Liotta plays the tortured soul so well, committing in every scene and utterly believable. His wide-eyed stares and physicality from putting on the pounds, like Stallone, also rounds out that this character is mentally and physically not in a good way. Liotta, before his death in interviews promoting ‘The Many Saints of Newark’, was often referring to acting as ‘playing pretend’, for him, like many great actors, it’s a very natural expression and he truly channels the character. Never expressing fear of vanity, he commits to every scene and even though the character has clearly made some bad choices, even accidentally killing his girlfriend, he remains a likeable presence and someone you root for in the film.
“It’s no great secret. You’re playing pretend. That’s basically what I do. I sit and think about the part, or what I’m feeling or why I’m saying something. It sounds simple but there’s a lot to it.”
The second standout performance is from Robert Patrick, playing one of Donlan’s trusted insiders, Jack Rucker. I find Patrick an astonishing and chronically underrated actor. He truly transforms in all his roles, even without dramatic physical transformations, the way the characters look, move and speak are all unique expressions. He’s a true character actor, embodying each role in an authentic and believable way. If you look at these performances below, even in stills form, the actor truly disappears and you are watching a character inhabit a story authentically.
Patrick’s Jack Rucker, is clearly one of those characters who you would find standing behind the bully at school, finding safety in their shadow and would literally hold down an opponent so Donlan can get in a cheap shot. So it’s gratifying to see the character get a taste of his own medicine when Figs rams a dart into his nostril after Rucker goads Figs about his drug-addicted girlfriend. A truly dislikable character, here are some of Rucker’s highlights:
Puking up at a party from drinking too much, and (we assume) drives himself home
Planting a gun in Superboy’s victim’s car
A right hook to Paul Calderon’s medic, who called him out on the above
Asking Freddy to ‘Tell this cupcake to heel’ towards Garofalo’s Deputy Betts
Calling Figsy’s girlfriend a whore and implying she’s a drug addict
Hold down Superboy in the above-ground-pool in order to drown him
Tries to humiliate Freddy at a fair where they’re shooting at a red star target, and delightfully after a first miss, Freddy hits five shots in a row inside the star, making Rucker think twice about Freddy’s abilities.
Alongside Nascarella’s Lagonda, he attacks Freddy and Superboy and shoots a gun, point blank, next to Freddy’s ‘good ear’, making him completely deaf.
Patrick plays it all so believably, and it all feels authentic in this world, there’s only one moment where he slightly redeems himself when Joey Randone’s life is at risk and even Rucker can’t believe the lows Donlan would stoop to increase the chances of Randone falling to his death. (Donlan locks a door to reach Randone, then time-wastes by picking the lock, instead of just kicking the door down, to Rucker’s disbelief).
Patrick’s Rucker, in standard position, behind the bully, Donlan.
Cop Land has often been compared to High Noon (1952), especially when Freddy goes to save Superboy from Donlan’s home. Tony Soprano was always on a literal and figurative quest to find this person, “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type?”. Tony just had to head up the road to the (fictional) town of Garrison and speak to the sheriff of Cop Land.
Cop Land is a rare film, in that many of the elements within it would benefit from more exposure. Whilst there are some brilliantly realised moments throughout the film; Freddy’s yearning for Liz, for example, is so clearly expressed. It’s a truly touching moment when he confesses to her that he didn’t get married as “All the best girls got taken.” whilst Bruce Springsteen mournfully sings ‘Stolen Car’.
But what you wouldn’t give to see Keitel and De Niro spar a little more! That scene in the convenience store has me wishing for more scenes where they tussle over their tumultuous past. What went down?!
How about some shady Sopranos-esque meet ups by the Brooklyn Bridge with Frank Vincent’s Lassaro and Tony Sirico’s Toy Torillo to let the mob storyline more clearly play out? The story had the potential to broaden itself into a larger commentary if it wanted to, but perhaps that would distract us from the more understated character study of Freddy.
Cop Land endures, and it’s great to see it seen and appreciated by new audiences thanks to continual rotation on streaming sites and due to its iconic cast, attracting diverse audiences who are exploring actors filmographies, (or perhaps being algorithmically promoted to).
Let’s pour one out to Freddy, over to you, Bruce…
And I'm driving a stolen car
On a pitch black night
And I'm telling myself I'm gonna be alright
But I ride by night and I travel in fear
That in this darkness I will disappear
