Our own Chris Bumbray caught RAMPART back at the Toronto Film Festival and loved it, singling out the performance by Woody Harrelson at the center of the film. Sure enough, as Oscar season ramps up, Harrelson is one of the front-runners for a Best Actor nomination for his role as a renegade cop in 1999 Los Angeles.
Here’s more about the film via the official synopsis:
Los Angeles, 1999. Officer Dave Brown (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?
Though the film had an Oscar-qualifying run in November, it hits theaters wide on January 27th and today we’re excited to debut a brand new clip from the film. What you see below really sets into motion the entire events of the film and causes Brown’s life to start spiraling out of control. Check out the clip below!