Roger Ebert Gave A Perfect Score To This Woody Harrelson Crime Thriller No One Talks About

In 2012, Woody Harrelson starred in "Rampart," a crime drama that, though well-reviewed, was a box office bomb. Still, a perfect review from Roger Ebert surely helped partially make up for the film's commercial performance, with the esteemed critic heaping praise on this gritty tale of a corrupt LAPD veteran who's forced to reckon with his shady legacy.

"Rampart" is directed by Israeli-American filmmaker Oren Moverman, who otherwise oversaw the Richard Gere-led "The Dinner" in 2017 and the 4-part documentary series "Willie Nelson & Family" in 2023. "Rampart" was the middle entry in a series of three films he directed between 2009 and 2014, the first being his directorial debut "The Messenger" and the third being "Time Out of Mind," which also starred Gere. "Rampart" was the only crime drama of the three, and saw Moverman team up with famed crime writer and noted chronicler of Los Angeles' seedy underbelly James Ellroy to pen the script. When you add in a stellar performance from Harrelson, you've got one of the best crime movies nobody talks about anymore.

One man who certainly wouldn't have forgotten the movie, however, is Ebert. The critic, who passed away at the age of 70 in 2013, gave "Rampart" a full four stars, praising Harrelson for his performance as a morally bankrupt crooked cop backed into a corner. While not everybody found it to be one of the greatest thrillers of the 21st century, it should at least be remembered more widely than it is, and, according to Ebert, might even deserve a spot on that list.

Having been nominated for an Oscar for writing "The Messenger," Oren Moverman decided to re-team with the film's stars, Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster, for "Rampart." While "The Messenger" followed Harrelson and Foster's troubled Army casualty notification officers, Foster plays a small supporting role in "Rampart," while Harrelson becomes the sole specimen under the microscope — and a grubby little specimen he is, too.

The story of the movie unfolds in the wake of the Rampart scandal of the late '90s, which exposed widespread corruption and criminality among officers of the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was this same division that inspired the FX show "The Shield" (though the series couldn't actually reference it by name). In the film, Harrelson's Dave Brown is a Rampart officer with 24 years of service under his belt. By "service," I mean he's spent much of that time doing pretty much everything the Rampart scandal eventually brought to light. Brown follows his own personal code, which at one point leads to him mercilessly beating a man who T-bones his car. Unfortunately for him, the whole thing is captured on video.

In the wake of the Rampart scandal, the LAPD and district attorney are eager to make an example out of Brown to distract from recent embarrassing revelations. As he grows more and more suspicious of being set up, Brown begins to spiral, becoming increasingly erratic and violent as the walls close in.

As you might expect, given the talent involved here, "Rampart" is an excellent crime thriller that, thanks to Bobby Bukowski's on-location cinematography, Ellroy's knowledge and experience, and Moverman's focused direction, feels strikingly realistic throughout.

"Rampart" premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival before hitting United States theaters in February of 2012, when it promptly bombed. The film brought in just $1.5 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $12 million. Still, it did manage a 74% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and impressed Roger Ebert enough to earn a perfect score.

Such a thing doesn't necessarily mean the film is actually good. After all, Ebert gave a perfect score to mediocre Samuel L. Jackson thriller "Lakeview Terrace." But in the case of "Rampart," he was pretty much right on the money. "Why is he this way?" asks the critic of Woody Harrelson's Dave Brown. "That question helps explain why the movie is so absorbing, because there is no answer." Evidently, the critic was impressed with how "Rampart" resisted the urge to give Brown a standard crime thriller motivation such as money or revenge, instead presenting a character who "behaves in this film primarily just to do bad things." That in and of itself was fascinating to Ebert, who also found Harrelson to be "an ideal actor for the role" due to the way in which he "implies that he's looking at everything and then watching himself looking."

The movie's refusal to explain Brown's actions as the result of some past trauma or desperation is indeed what makes it so simultaneously absorbing and disturbing. Harrelson's corrupt cop is a nasty piece of work simply because, well, he's a nasty piece of work. Sometimes that's all there is. Those interested can see Dave Brown being awful for free over on Tubi, which continues to hold its standing as one of the best streamers in the game.