Rampart
Dave Brown has spent years enforcing his own version of justice. Now the whole city is watching him answer for it.
Director
Oren Moverman
Release
24 February 2011
Runtime
108 Minutes
Certificate
15
Synopsis
Dave Brown has spent years policing Los Angeles according to rules largely of his own making. He sees himself as the person willing to do the dirty work others won't. That attitude has allowed him to justify behaviour that increasingly belongs to another era of policing. At home, things aren't any simpler. Brown has two daughters by two sisters, Catherine and Barbara, and maintains a strange, fractured relationship with both women. Somehow, they all remain connected as a family. Then Brown's professional world begins falling apart. A confrontation with a motorist ends with Brown brutally beating the man. Someone records it. With the LAPD already under scrutiny because of the Rampart corruption scandal, the footage turns Brown into a liability. Suddenly, the officer accustomed to investigating others finds himself under scrutiny. Assistant District Attorney Joan Confrey wants answers. The department needs to protect itself. Brown becomes increasingly convinced that people around him are trying to sacrifice him to contain a much larger scandal. Rather than change, he digs deeper. His paranoia grows. His relationships deteriorate. And his increasingly desperate attempts to regain control only expose how little control he actually has. Brown may believe he's fighting corrupt institutions, opportunistic officials and enemies determined to destroy him. But every decision forces him closer to confronting what he's spent years avoiding. The consequences of being Dave Brown.
The Movie Trailer
Los Angeles, 1999.
Officer Dave Brown has been a cop long enough to develop his own understanding of justice.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always resemble the law he's supposed to enforce.
Aggressive, prejudiced and convinced that questionable methods are justified by results, Brown has survived for years inside the LAPD by refusing to examine the damage he causes.
Then somebody catches him on camera beating a suspect.
The footage couldn't arrive at a worse moment.
The LAPD's Rampart Division is already engulfed in a corruption scandal, and Brown suddenly becomes exactly the kind of officer the department can't afford to defend.
His career begins collapsing.
His complicated family life follows.
And the harder Brown tries to maintain control, the clearer it becomes that the greatest threat to his survival may not be the department, the investigation or the people trying to remove him.
It may be Dave Brown himself.
DAVE BROWN
Brown Has Spent So Long Making His Own Rules That He Barely Recognises Anyone Else's
Dave Brown doesn't think of himself as a corrupt cop.
That's what makes him more interesting than someone who just takes envelopes of cash.
Brown believes in his own methods.
Years of getting away with intimidation, violence and prejudice have allowed him to turn misconduct into something he can describe as necessary police work.
When the department finally begins turning against him, Brown doesn't see accountability.
He sees betrayal.
And that inability to distinguish between the two drives him further into isolation.
RAMPART
The Department Needs Someone to Blame — And Brown Makes a Convenient Target
Brown's problems don't happen in isolation.
The LAPD is already dealing with the fallout of the Rampart scandal.
Public confidence matters.
Political survival matters.
And a videotape showing an officer brutally beating somebody is precisely the kind of image nobody in authority wants attached to the department.
Brown understands that.
But rather than questioning his behaviour, he becomes convinced he's being selected to absorb the consequences of a much larger institutional failure.
The uncomfortable part is that both things can contain some truth.
Brown may be useful to people looking for a scapegoat.
That doesn't make him innocent.
THE FALL
The Harder Brown Fights to Save His Life, the More of It He Destroys
Brown approaches his personal crisis the same way he approaches policing.
Push harder.
Intimidate somebody.
Find leverage.
Never show weakness.
Those tactics may have worked on the street.
They're far less effective when what's collapsing is his own life.
His family relationships deteriorate.
His professional allies become less dependable.
His paranoia makes every conversation feel like another investigation.
Brown keeps searching for somebody responsible for what's happening to him.
The one person he struggles to investigate is himself.