Rampart (2011)

Good movie but grossly overrated

As Good As It Gets

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is a seriously awful film. Pointless, depressing, self indulgent. Well over an hour of my life that I will never get back. Compelling drama? Yes of course because I was dying to see if the film actually got any better! And when it was over guess what? It never got better than the first 10 minutes. You can watch this movie on fast forward and know the plot line, guess the script (i still can;t believe there was a script involved) and might make it marginally more entertaining. No idea why Sigourney Weaver got involved in this as the cast list looked like it might have been worth while. Never been so deflated. Glad we didn't pay to watch this!

This movie is not very good at all on the front of the DVD case it says "dazzling and stunning...HARRELSON is astonishing well I totally disagree with this. It is a dark movie following L.A. cop Dave brown (Woody Harrelson) going around getting everyone on his bad side and beating people up it is a very badly made movie it does not seem to have a beginning or end it just seems to start half way through a movie then end badly with you not knowing what was even going on Woody Harrelson did some very good acting in a movie called "Friends with benefits" which I highly recommend to watch and he's not the main actor but his performance is professional but anyone thinking about buying this movie I would not recommend buying it and save your money.

I can't believe some of the negative posts written about this movie, and although it isn't without its flaws it is still film worthy of your valuable viewing time. That is if you consider yourself as anything of a "serious" cinema enthusiast, as opposed to a common or garden movie fan. I have given it a maximum score of 10 stars, not that it deserves 10 stars but just to attempt to redress the balance a little.It isn't a feel good entertainment, it is grim, it is seedy and although I didn't find it harrowing I could quite understand if some viewers did. However I actually finished up having quite a lot of sympathy for the Dave Brown character. I feel he is a man who works to his own moral compass, he has served his country in Vietnam and his community as a police officer, he tries to be a good father. If he can bust a meth lab by roughing up a shop lifter then so be it. He allegedly murdered a serial rapist. He is the type of cop that Hollywood movies and the popular culture glorify, the tough cop whose unconventional methods get results. Only this is "real life" and as such he is betrayed at every turn, his country betrays him for being a soldier in an unpopular ( i.e. losing ) war, the Police department he works for is out to pin him to the wall as a diversion from the more endemic scandal it has to face, his friends ( I'm thinking the Ned Beaty character, General and his lover ) turn there back on him and finally his family turn on him too. You may say he deserves it, but I don't think so.All the performances from the first rate cast are great, you can really see them getting there teeth into the roles. Much of it looks and feels like ad lib, particularly any scene involving Dave and one of the many women in his life. The movie is shot in a cross between a gritty fly on the wall documentary style and surveillance footage. Many scenes are filmed through a foreground object, like through the branches of a bush or the gap in a curtain or through a window. Some are filmed from far away as if the viewer was a peeping Tom or surveillance operative and it gives weight to Dave's feelings of paranoia. Through this lens LA is a soulless, grimy, squalid, and above all dangerous place to be, which is about right. It is a foreign and alien world, even to its native inhabitants. That is the world through Dave Brown's eyes, it is A truth but not necessarily THE truth. If the film is about injustice, racism, sexism and intolerance then what does it say of our intolerance of Dave Brown? Until we have seen the world through his eyes, who are we to judge?

I was going to just start blasting off in a torrent of put downs and end with comments such as "Worse movie ever!" and "DO NOT WATCH THIS, EVER!"I was going to end the review here, but the guidelines say a minimum of ten lines.So I will add this... The box above where you can mark if your review has a spoiler, yeah well that isn't an issue with this movie, NOTHING HAPPENS!Again, NOTHING, zero, N. Noth.. NOTHING... HAPPENS!So not to waste your time, anymore...Quite simply it got two stars from me because the acting and the Actors are good.