Rampart

Bit of an odd item this one. Unknown to me, apparently in the late nineties, there was a bit of a scandal as the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, which serves an area of West Downtown LA was implicated in a scandal which seemed to show systemic corruption and misconduct in the anti-gang taskforce. (I'm saying "seemed" here purely because I know almost nothing about this issue.) This film takes this situation as the background for a character study of a police officer living in, and personifying this culture.

The key point is that Woody Harrelson is playing a cop who considers himself to be one of the good guys, someone doing his job, an important job, keeping people safe. But, of course, this is far from the case. He has an embattled, adversarial view of criminals, and a disregard for the rules. This leads him to brutalise and murder suspects where he feels it necessary, and even go so far as to seize the proceeds of crime for his own use. So we have a portrait of a monster, who thinks that basically everything he does is perfectly justified, and the majority of what he does is even laudable.

Downsides? Other than a downward spiral, there's no direction to the film. He's a bad guy, doing bad things, which are gradually catching up with him, but where there's no particular path towards redemption, or an ultimate conclusion. We just look at the guy for a while, sift through his dirty laundry, then walk away, sort of saying "Well, that's what he's like, then." And I would agree that perhaps it's the correct decision to not look towards there even being a conclusion, but my overall impression is that if you're going to roll the credits without a conclusion, why there? Why not five minutes ago? Or in five minute's time?

So, it's like watching part of a film; it kind of begins in media res and expects you to catch up to speed, and ends in media res, and asks you to think what might happen now. And in the sense that life really never ends until it actually ends, that's actually the right decision; plenty of this guy's life before the start of the film is relevant to making him who he is, and where he will end up is also very up in the air. But still, I found myself wanting more structure. But appreciated for what it is, it's very, very good.