Showing @ Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh until Thu 8 Mar

Oren Moverman / USA / 2011 / 108mins

Oren Moverman’s second directorial outing after his successful war drama The Messenger (2009) is a bit of an awkwardly constructed affair about police corruption and moral complexity. It tells of David Brown (Woody Harrelson), one of the last remaining renegade cops in the LAPD who becomes the scapegoat during the infamous Rampart scandal of the late 1990s.

Moverman’s film has many things going for it: detailing the crooked sensibilities which govern unit-led tactical enforcements is a controversial mission and is a sharp criticism of how the Rampart scandal was handled. As a film though, it’s frustrating. Harrelson’s character is too ambivalent; he ultimately is a dirty cop, self-admittedly, yet he is depicted as a caring if not incompetent father; he possesses all the macho, street hardened mentalities which turn him into a clichéd thug yet is well-versed in law and can hold his own in a room of solicitors. Arguably this makes his character complex and layered, but it comes across as false – for all his merit there isn’t a great empathy for Brown and it eventually winds up as a showcase of how good an actor Harrelson is. Though offering one of the more accomplished performances of his career, it fails to hide the gaps in this weak portrayal of jagged rebel life.