This is a film that I truly cannot wait for.
Directed and co-written by Oren Moverman (The Messenger), and co-written by the celebrated US crime novelist James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential), the film has just had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Moverman first started making a name for himself back in 2007 as co-writer on I’m Not There., the Bob Dylan biopic starring the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger. He then earned himself an Oscar nomination with his 2009 directorial debut, The Messenger, starring Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, and Jena Malone.
For Rampart, he’s working together with Harrelson and Foster again, after proving so successful first time around, for his highly anticipated follow-up to The Messenger, and I can’t wait to see his next film. Based on the real-life Rampart scandal of the late 1990s, which saw the investigation of the corruption within the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang section of the LAPD,
“Its central protagonist is Officer Dave Brown (Harrelson), a Vietnam vet and a Rampart Precinct cop who operates by his own rules within the Los Angeles Police Department. A bit of an eccentric character to begin with — he has fathered children with two sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon), each of whom he intermittently lives with — he also marches to his own beat and plays by his own rules on the job… that is, until he is caught on tape beating a suspect and is subsequently scapegoated by his own Rampart division when it falls under a corruption investigation. Haunted by his past actions and the implications that they have had on both others and himself, he begins to mentally unravel.”
Harrelson and Foster aren’t the only two talented stars Moverman has enlisted for this project, with Rampart also starring Steve Buscemi, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Anne Heche, Ice Cube, Brie Larson, and Cynthia Nixon, and by all accounts, that’s a cast capable of a lot.
These first three clips from the film, combined into one video, come courtesy of THR via The Playlist, and they are a brilliant first look at the film that show how amazing we can expect it to be. The pictures we’ve seen from it have been so great, and this video just compounds that.
If you’re going to the BFI London Film Festival next month, then you can count me sincerely jealous, because Rampart is one of the many great films that have been announced as getting their UK premiere there. The film is still seeking distribution both here and in the States, so no word yet on an expected release date, but I really hope that it won’t be too long a wait now. I can only assume how brilliantly it’s done at Toronto, being one of the most anticipated films playing the festival, and how terrifically it should do at the London Film Festival next month, so hopefully it will get snapped up very soon.
