Writer-director Oren Moverman’s last and first film, The Messenger, earned critical appraise at last year’s Academy Awards, where Moverman and co-writer Allesandro Camon were nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Woody Harrelson earned a well-deserved nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The Messenger may not have done particularly well at the box office, and it sadly didn’t get much of a UK release at all (only getting a limited release this summer, despite coming out in the States in 2009), but it was an immense directorial debut for Moverman that gained the attention that it deserved at the awards season.

This time around, Moverman has cast Harrelson front and centre in Rampart, which is sure to repeat The Messenger’s reception at the Oscars, and hopefully out-perform it at the box office too. With only his second film, Moverman shows that he is capable of so much as a director, creating an incredibly distinctive film in what has usually been something of a worn-out genre, making Rampart the best cop crime drama since L.A. Confidential. Which, of course, was based on the original novel by Rampart co-writer, James Ellroy, one of the best crime fiction writers in the States today.

A slight word of advanced warning/encouragement, depending on how you take it: if you’re looking for an action-heavy, sit-back-and-switch-off film, Rampart probably isn’t going to be what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a dark character portrayal of corruption and police brutality, you’re going to love this. I’m already very much looking forward to seeing what Moverman has in store for us next.

We open on the streets of Los Angeles, 1999. The film is situated in the wake of the real-life Rampart scandal, which saw the investigation of dozens of corrupt cops implicated in acts of unprovoked beatings and shootings, planting of evidence, and framing of suspects – all of which we find present in our leading man, Officer Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson). Throughout, he is painted in an entirely dark and corrupt light, right down to his physical appearance, which saw Harrelson’s dental work altered to give him a permanent look of a beaten upper lip.

Whilst out on patrol, his car is rammed into by another driver, and when that driver tries to flee the scene, Brown, in full uniform, chases him down, tackles him to the floor, and continues to beat him within an inch of his life. And as his bad luck has it, the whole beating is caught on camera, without the initial crash which provoked (though of course not excused) the beating.

His home life is painted in no better light, portraying him as a serial womaniser, an alcoholic, and a sex addict. He is married to one of two sisters who live next door to each other, but he has a daughter with each. And though all five of the family eat together, pretty much everything about them screams dysfunction, a point made all too clear when the youngest daughter asks, following a joke made by a classmate, whether or not she is the product of incest in an inbred family. Technically, as Brown tells her, she is not, but naturally that doesn’t make the family any more of a workable situation. Sat down to dinner one night, Brown asks his wife (Anne Heche) if they’ll be sleeping together that night, and when she tells him she’s busy, he moves on to ask her sister (Cynthia Nixon), the mother of his first child, if they can sleep together.

And yet somehow, in spite of Brown’s constant negative portrayal, having endless one-night stands in hotel rooms, evincing rough justice old school-style, and so much more, there is still something about his character that we are drawn to. And it’s hard to describe why, why there is a part of us that likes such a detestable character. It isn’t that we are seduced by him like his female conquests are, but perhaps more that we can sympathise with him. However misguided, he stands by his convictions, stands up for himself when everyone around him is looking to cast him as the scapegoat. And though corrupt, his old school renegade police practices are targeted towards the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. In years gone by, he has earned himself the nickname ‘Date-Rape Dave’, not for reasons you might think, but for the street justice he handed down to a man accused of date rape thirteen years prior to the events in Rampart.

Following the Rampart scandal, however, Brown’s higher-ups see the opportunity to hang him out to dry, and attempt to force a resignation out of Brown so that they can be seen to be actively pursuing justice within their own force. But that resignation is one Brown is utterly unwilling to give, seeing in his own eyes to be in the right, having done nothing wrong.

Harrelson’s co-star in The Messenger, Ben Foster, has a smaller but nonetheless integral role in Rampart, and his performance as a homeless veteran is a powerful one. Foster’s transformation into “The General” is incredibly impressive, not just visually – he’s grown a beard, permanently sits all but static in his wheelchair, and has contact lenses to alter his eyes to constantly be widened and blackened – but also through his acting, with Foster proving once again how immensely talented he is. His role is probably not big enough to earn him a Best Supporting Nomination come awards season, but his performance is certainly worthy of it.

The film’s focus on Brown, who is present in every single scene, necessitates an amazing actor, and Harrelson is precisely that. In what is arguably the best performance of Harrelson’s career to date, the actor brings to the screen an utterly convincing portrayal of a man hounded by all those around him, who is very much in the wrong, and yet who is someone we nonetheless align ourselves with at times. A heroic anti-hero, if you will.

The film’s ending (here is your slight spoiler alert) is perhaps one that will divide the audience, as it lacks a definitive resolution that might leave some viewers unsatisfied with its ending. For me, however, the lack of such a conclusion is in itself the perfect conclusion to the film. After an intoxicating scene in an underground club in L.A., which Moverman brilliantly shot with an entirely different feel to the rest of the film, working through the shifting mindset of Brown’s trajectory, Brown confronts the DA investigator (Ice Cube) heading up the case against him, and (without spoiling anything) we see a sense of vulnerability, even desperation, that is non-existent in his character throughout the film leading up to this point.

Millennium Entertainment picked up the US rights to the film after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, and they have announced plans that will put the film securely in the Oscar race for next year’s awards season. Having been lucky enough to see Rampart at the London Film Festival – and I sincerely hope that it will get a UK release much sooner and wider than The Messenger did – I truly believe that Harrelson’s performance is worthy of Oscar recognition. It was relentless, powerful, and immense, and I can’t think of anyone else that could have pulled off the part of Dave Brown anywhere near as well as Harrelson does. Moverman has chosen well to surround himself with the same leading men from The Messenger, and it has absolutely paid off. There’s been nothing of this calibre in years, and I can’t wait for the UK to get it on wide release so I can go and see it again on the big screen. It is nothing short of epic.

[Rating:5/5]