Cop Land (1997)

Film: Cop Land (1997)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert de Niro, Michael Rappaport

Director: James Mangold

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sylvester Stallone: click here to learn more about Mr. Stallone (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about Cliffhanger really serving as the last true blockbuster to Sylvester Stallone's name, but it was not the last time that Stallone made a film worth watching.  Cop Land is a unique movie in the pantheon of Stallone's pictures.  In 1997, it was released as a late summer film that was against-type for the actor, but it was well-received, the first time Stallone had starred in a movie that got truly good reviews in over a decade.  And given the film's tiny budget (only $15 million despite Stallone himself able to command that large of salary in other pictures on his own), it was a profitable hit, something that Stallone really hadn't been able to achieve since Cliffhanger.  But Stallone would later lament the film's only mildly good box office would cement the end of his time as a leading man (it's worth noting, in a month we're talking about Stallone & Schwarzenegger together, that both of them were decidedly out of fashion by 1997, and it was Arnold, not Sly who was getting a Razzie nomination that year).  In reality, given what would come next, it might have better served as a reminder of what could have been.

(Spoilers Ahead) Because Cop Land is a surprisingly good movie, and not just good in comparison to Stallone's other pictures.  The film focuses on Officer Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Rappaport), the screw-up nephew of Lieutenant Ray Donlan (Keitel), a corrupt police officer in the NYPD who, because of a loophole in the residency system, actually lives in a suburb dominated by police officers.  When Superboy kills a suspect he believes to have a gun (but doesn't actually have a gun), Donlan fakes Babitch's death to protect him, but in the process catches the attention of Internal Affairs, including Lieutenant Moe Tilden (de Niro).  Tilden focuses in on the sheriff of the small suburb that Donlan views as an extension of New York, Freddy Heflin (Stallone), as Heflin knows all of these men well, but because of an accident when he was younger where he was saving a woman from drowning, he is deaf in one ear and can't be in the NYPD proper.  This creates a standoff between Donlan, Tilden, and an initially weak-willed Heflin, all trying to figure out what happened to Superboy, and ends with Heflin taking a stand against him.

Cop Land is basically a Martin Scorsese movie not being directed by Scorsese, which feels like an insult in some ways, both because Mangold (a good if inconsistent director) is not as revolutionary in his vision as Scorsese would be even in his worst picture, and also because he robs Scorsese's slew of actors wholesale (not just Keitel, Liotta, & de Niro, but Cathy Moriarty is also in a small role in the picture).  But Cop Land works in a way that Scorsese probably wouldn't have achieved by minimizing the stylishness for something more barebones.  There's scenes in the movie that feel really impressive primarily because they acknowledge the lack of choices in these characters, particularly Stallone's Heflin.  I loved the way that he talks about how the best thing he's ever done (saving a girl from drowning while causing him to go deaf) is something he wouldn't do again, and the moral regret he has knowing he isn't the hero he once was because it cost him so much.  There's also the scenes at the end where Liotta (probably the best in the cast) who has felt like something of a moral compass, is exposed as just as corrupt as Keitel's Donlan, just in a greedier and more personal way.  No one is above the law here, and the final scenes where Stallone's moralistic-but-cowardly Heflin starts to shoot up this crime syndicate masquerading as law enforcement, is jaw-dropping because it feels like the only way the story can end-that crime can only be fought with crime.

Cop Land would not, as Stallone would say, mark the end of his time as a leading man...that had largely sailed at this point and this felt like a shining blip on a radar of doom.  But he would continue to make dreadful pictures like Driven, Avenging Angelo, & D-Tox which only exacerbated the vision of him as a joke, one that even international audiences wouldn't support any longer.  But even a surprise hit as a villain in Spy Kids 3-D couldn't prevent what was inevitable-that Stallone would spend most of the rest of his life latching onto former glory in additional Rambo & Rocky films (though the latter would get him a much-deserved Oscar nomination for 2015's Creed) and lucking into a gigantic "last gasp" action all-star franchise in The Expendables.  He would eventually even wander into the Marvel Universe, but his appearance would barely register as a special event at this point, the land of movie stars he once dominated now taken over by "IP as King" in action flicks.

Next month we're going to continue to focus on a man who (like Schwarzenegger & Stallone) would become a mainstay of successful action films of the 1980's, but unlike the two of them, he would thrive in the 1990's, and it would take a series of truly bizarre personal & professional scandals to have the public sour on his teflon image.  I'll tell you who he is on Thursday.