Bob Dylan Loved This Sylvester Stallone Crime Movie That We Don't Talk About Enough

Bob Dylan is more than a musician. He's an artist who draws inspiration from every aspect of existence, films included. Dylan was, for instance, impressed and influenced by the classic '60s crime drama "Breathless." What you might be surprised to learn, however, is that he was also quite taken with a more modern crime drama: Sylvester Stallone's 1997 film "Cop Land."

Dylan is the kind of pop culture legend that simply won't exist in a few years. In the age of social media and oversharing, no public figure can create the kind of mystique that has grown around this man. As Timothée Chalamet's version of the musician says in 2024's safe but enjoyable biopic, "A Complete Unknown," "People make up their past. They remember what they want, they forget the rest." That's essentially what Dylan did his entire life, making up his past, present, and even his future as he went and, in the process, transcending superstardom to essentially become a myth in his own right.

All of which is to say that he's undeniably one of the all-time greats. Any man who writes the line "the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face" is automatically a legend to me. While this might not be true for his work as a painter, thankfully, it seems the man's taste in movies is solid. Dylan harbors a love for Stallone's cop thriller, which, as it turns out, the actor himself wishes would get a little more shine than it does — "Cop Land."

In 2022, Sylvester Stallone spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his career and was asked what he considered to be his most underrated film. As part of his answer, he told the outlet that he expected "Cop Land" to do better than it did. Looking back, you can see why.

"Cop Land" is one of Stallone's best movies. He stars alongside Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro in a film that also happens to have a very clear and compelling premise. Stallone plays Sheriff Freddy Heflin, who oversees the small New Jersey town of Garrison, which sits on the opposite side of the Hudson River from New York City. Though Heflin is ostensibly the man in charge, the town is a haven for corrupt NYPD cops who want to escape their own force's internal affairs.

Before becoming Sheriff, Heflin dreamt of becoming an NYPD officer himself, but had to abandon his ambitions after losing hearing in one ear while trying to rescue a woman from the Hudson. As such, he's very much in the thrall of his town's NYPD contingent. When he discovers a conspiracy led by Keitel's Lieutenant Ray Donlan, however, Heflin agrees to help Robert De Niro's Internal Affairs officer Moe Tilden expose the dirty cops' secret.

"Cop Land" was written and directed by James Mangold, who later went on to co-write and direct "A Complete Unknown." It's a good thing he paired with Sly in the '90s, as it seems his mostly overlooked crime drama might have helped him get the seal of approval from Bob Dylan, who evidently liked "Cop Land" a whole lot.

Bob Dylan isn't the most public guy, so to tell an intimate story of the singer-songwriter's early years in Greenwich Village, James Mangold needed to win him over. In a Happy Sad Confused podcast interview (via Rolling Stone), the director spoke about meeting with the musician. "I've spent several, wonderfully charming days in his company, just one-on-one," he said. "I have a script that's personally annotated by him and treasured by me. He loves movies. The first time I sat down with Bob, one of the first things he said to me was, 'I love 'Cop Land'.'"

That must have been heartening, especially considering "Cop Land" didn't perform as Mangold or the studio, Miramax, expected. It did make a respectable $63.7 million on a $15 million budget, but with an all-star cast, the movie was expected to be a bigger hit. Indeed, Sylvester Stallone points to "Cop Land" as an underrated gem that nearly ruined his career.

Mangold spoke to Variety about his experience of the film's release. "That was a kind of painful movie when it came out," he said. "I had a full-on difficult Weinstein experience, and beyond that, it didn't gross what they had hoped." According to the director, that stacked cast prompted expectations that at that early time in his career, he "didn't know how to fulfill or ignore." But that only makes Dylan's love for the film, and the fact that it's remembered as one of the best cop movies of all time, more meaningful. "There's a great level of relief," continued Mangold, "when you feel like the movie still exists that people come up to you — even Bob Dylan, by the way — and say, 'I love that movie.'"