Cult Crime Film Recommendation: Cop Land (1997)

File this dark gem under They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To.

I still love going to the movies. The smell of the popcorn and its fake seed-oil “butter,” the lights, and the magic of the dark theater where you nod off into a fictive dream of lights and sounds. But I miss the pre-superhero days of the 1990s when there was always an interesting mix of film genres to choose from on any given weekend at the local cinema. Which brings us to one of my personal Top 10 crime films I recently revisited.

James Mangold’s Cop Land is one of the most underrated crime dramas of the ‘90s, a modern noir. Released in 1997, the film was written and directed by Mangold, who would go on to helm Marvel one-off Logan and the high octane dad movie (that’s a compliment) Ford v Ferrari. The cast is a dream team of heavy hitters, including Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and pre-political Robert De Niro. Despite that firepower, the film was only a relatively modest success at the box office, grossing around $63 million on a $15 million budget. But in the years since, it’s gained a well-earned cult following. A following I’d like you to join.

Stallone’s Freddy is a one-man army against the empty badges.

Stallone’s performance is the big, beating heart of the film. Playing Freddy Heflin, the sheriff of a sleepy New Jersey town stuffed to the gills with corrupt NYPD cops, Stallone transformed himself. He gained 40 pounds for the role, ditched the muscles, and gave the most understated performance of his career. It was a serious dramatic turn, more Rocky than Rambo, but without the feel-good theatrics of rising to the occasion to go the distance with champ Apollo Creed. Freddy is a soft-spoken, half-deaf lawman written off as a joke. But he who laughs last, laughs… well, you get it, man.

Mangold pulled back the curtain on his inspiration in a 1997 New York Times interview:

“I wanted to write a Western set in New Jersey. A man with a badge who’s never used his gun. A man who has to decide what kind of man he really is.”

Cop Land uses both hardboiled and noir tropes with subtlety and style. The corrupt cops are extensions of a broken system. Freddy is the one honest man left, a tragic figure in the mold of many noir protagonists before him. He’s flawed, isolated, and slowly awakened to the darkness around him. The setting may be modern, but the themes are timeless. A boiling pot of loyalty versus law, silence versus justice, and the high cost of doing the right thing. As my late father once told me, “Sometimes the ‘easy’ road winds up being the harder trip.”

The most striking thematic element in Cop Land is its tension between formal justice and vigilante justice. The NYPD officers in Garrison, the fictional town across the river, operate with impunity, manipulating jurisdictional boundaries to create their own corrupt playground. Freddy, unfairly marginalized and ignored as a sort of deaf cuck in an empty uniform, eventually has to step outside the law to uphold it. It’s not just a story about a good cop, it’s a story about the last good cop, backed into a corner and forced to choose cowering or fighting.

Stallone’s Freddy is a classic American archetype, the lone man with a code. He doesn’t make speeches. He doesn’t threaten. But he’s the one person in the story who changes, grows, and finally stands up to the real bad guys. It’s one of the most noir moments in modern cinema when a man who never fired his gun finally decides to use it. And he does it for justice rather than revenge.

A subtle but meaningful thematic easter egg comes in the opening shot of the film. As the camera pans across the town, we see a sign that reads “Pop. 1280,” which is an undeniable nod to Jim Thompson’s nihilistic masterpiece about a corrupt Southern sheriff (Pop. 1280). The reference signals what kind of story is about to assault us. It’s not a lame, mainstream heroic cop tale, but a noir where law is slippery and justice comes at the cost of blood.

Cop Land is a tragedy with a hero who puts everything, including life itself, on the line. And, for my money, it’s Stallone’s finest hour beyond Rocky. Do yourself a favor and stream this flick ASAP.