Movie review: 'Rampart' is a cop out

R (pervasive strong language, violence, sexual content); 108 min.

The crazy eyes and idiosyncratic drawl of Woody Harrelson are enough to carry the dirty-cop study Rampart, but even such powers as those can't make engaging this weary L.A. noir.

Without Harrelson's inherent intrigue, the heavy-handed provocations of Rampart would be difficult to suffer. But Harrelson's intense and committed performance keeps Oren Moverman's film moving, even while the grim and overdone story wallows affectedly.

Rampart is set in 1999 Los Angeles, and its title refers to a notoriously scandal-plagued police division. The film, which Moverman wrote with crime novel writer James Ellroy ( L.A. Confidential), doesn't try to analyze what led to a corrupt division, but rather examines the specific formation of a badge-wearing monster.

At home, we see a softer, complicated side to Harrelson's Dave Brown. He has two ex-wives (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche, both looking lost) who are sisters and neighbors with whom he has a teenage daughter (Brie Larson) and a younger daughter (Sammy Boyarsky).

But Brown is in a self-destructive tailspin: acting out violently, desperate for departmental cover (Ned Beatty plays a sinister LAPD retiree) and picking up women easily.

Harrelson dominates the picture, but Brown's unraveling feels increasingly unrealistic and uninteresting while it circles around ideas established in the first half-hour. Instead of leading toward understanding, Rampart remains a dirty-cop caricature, more a complaint than a story.

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-- Jake Coyle, The Associated Press