Sneak Preview: RAMPART (Oren Moverman, 2011)
Event Date: January 12, 2012 - 7:30pm
Location: The James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall 1409, UCLA
Los Angeles, 1999. Officer Dave Brown (two-time Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson) is a Vietnam vet and a Rampart Precinct cop, dedicated to doing "the people's dirty work" and asserting his own code of justice, often blurring the lines between right and wrong to maintain his action-hero state of mind. When he gets caught on tape beating a suspect, he finds himself in a personal and emotional downward spiral as the consequences of his past sins and his refusal to change his ways in light of a department-wide corruption scandal seal his fate. Brown internalizes his fear, anguish and paranoia as his world, complete with two ex-wives who are sisters, two daughters, an aging mentor dispensing bad advice, investigators galore, and a series of seemingly random women, starts making less and less sense. In the end, what is left is a human being stripped of all his pretense, machismo, chauvinism, arrogance, sexism, homophobia, racism, aggression, misanthropy; but is it enough to redeem him as a man?
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival
Official Selection, BFI London Film Festival
Official Selection, Maui Film Festival
Official Selection, Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival
"Woody Harrelson has perhaps never been better than he is in the seamy, scandalous jumbled rumble of 'Rampart.'" -Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times
"A vivid, often mesmerizing portrait of a man rotting from the inside out...[Woody Harrelson] brings both a raw intensity and a necessary lightness of touch to his unsentimental performance. His Dave is a monster in many ways, but brutally human to the end." -Manohla Dargis, New York Times
"Oren Moverman's Rampart is a terrific film: tense, shocking, complex, mesmerizing." -Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Harrelson's portrayal of a swinging dick staring down the abyss...is perilously close to perfect; it's the finest, most harrowing thing he's ever done." -David Fear, Time Out New York
DIRECTOR: Oren Moverman
WRITERS: Oren Moverman and James Ellroy
STARRING: Woody Harrelson, Steve Buscemi, Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Brie Larson, Ice Cube, Cynthia Nixon, Jon Bernthal
Millenium Entertainment/Strategy PR
35mm, 108 min.
Rampart + Official Trailer [HD] from Rampart Movie on Vimeo.
