Copland

Copland has received a fair amount of attention because the action machine Sylvester Stallone is seen in a serious role alongside heavyweights such as Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro. Beyond that, Copland is also a crime drama with something to say.

Freddy Heflin is the good-natured sheriff in the small town of Garrison, New Jersey. Freddy, however, is far from the town's only policeman. Garrison is copland, the place where all the New York cops have settled with their families to put some distance between themselves and their brutal workplace. The idyll is only skin-deep, however, for the cops have a special network, including with people who are officially their enemies, but Freddy chooses to turn a blind eye to the corruption.

Freddy is a figure out of tragedy. A man whose greatest dream is to become a New York cop, but who is rejected time and again because he is stone deaf in one ear. He sustained the hearing damage when, as a younger man, he saved the girl Liz from drowning. Freddy is in love with Liz, but she is married to a cop, and unhappily at that.

When the police hero Murray Babitch shoots two unarmed black joyriders, he apparently commits suicide at the scene. In reality, however, it is his uncle Ray Donlan, king of copland, who has helped Babitch go underground. Thanks to his connections, Donlan believes he can get his nephew a new identity, but for once the network fails. After the shooting, Moe Tilden from Internal Affairs turns up. With Freddy's help he may be able to get to the bottom of all the corruption, which also includes Freddy's close friend Gary Figgis, who spends the money on drugs. Freddy, naturally, does not want to rat on anyone, but gradually things develop in Garrison in such a way that Freddy can no longer turn the other cheek.

Copland also ends with a brutal shoot-out, but there is not much Rambo about it, fortunately, for it is clear that Freddy does not stand a chance without help.

The main theme, then, is corruption within the very profession that is supposed to stop that kind of lawbreaking, but Ray Donlan's group does not shy away from murder either. Loyalty is also an important theme, not least in relation to the sheriff Freddy, for whom the dilemma hits very close to home.

Superbly played by Stallone, who put on 30kg for the role and does not look much like Rocky...