Cop Land

It's very rare that an actor will deliberately alter his appearance for a part in a movie rather than use some form of makeup or special effects but for his part in Cop Land, Sylvester Stallone put on 15 kilograms of weight to 'fit' the part.

Why? Well his part in this movie is that of the Sherrif of Garrison, a small town across from New York City, where Freddy (Stallone) dreams of one day becoming a police officer in. To this day his dreams have been shattered because of a hearing impairment he has in his right ear.

Joey, player by Harvey Keitel, is Freddys idol. But Joey is not all that Freddy has made him out to be and when a young cop commits suicide under unsual circumstances, Freddy discovers something that will test his loyalty to his idols or upholding the law.

Cop Land is not your usual action packed Stallone film and if that is what you may be expecting then stop right there. In this movie, you fell sorry for the disabled Freddy and it shows when his friends treat him like the new dumb kid of the gang. He puts in a good performance yet you somehow feel that there is no one main actor, but rather a bunch of extra length cameos in a way.

The quality of the video from Village is on the improve and it shows in this transfer. It's surprising that most of this movie actually occurs at night or on very overcast days which brings out alot of shadows. Shadow detail is good but in some areas it got too dark. Then again, it could have been the directors mood for the film, but its not something that I've been used to in the past.

The transfer is formatted at 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. There was a little aliasing/shimmering evident in some scenes, most noticeable on the roof of the wild aces bar when Freddy is outside swiping quarters from the parking meters for his pinball machine.

All in all, a good transfer so I'm giving Village an encouraging 8. Keep the improvements coming.

This is not your soundtrack enhanced flick. About 10 minutes of footage near the end is silent apart from some gun-shots and subtle effects.

Dialogue was legible, but I had to do some tweaking with the center channel during the opening scenes but it appeared only to be a small error. We hear De Niro narrating as his character and when we cut to Freddy playing pinball, his narration is very faint as if he was in the back room of the bar somewhere. This is more evident on the mpeg soundtrack as the dolby digital 5.1 track was slightly louder. Even so, this noticable volume drop in the narration was annoying enough to pick up the amp remote and fiddle with the adjustments.

The rest of the movie went along fine and there wasn't anything in particular that stood out in the soundtrack worth commenting on.

This is the annoying part of the disc. Roadshow have gone for the quantity factor rather than the quality. How so you say? Let me explain individually.

I actually enjoyed this movie but it needed just a little more character building and a deeper plot. Stallones character wasn't explored as much as I would have hoped and if it was it would have honored him with a best actor nomination of some sort.

Keitel is probably the only actor in here that is reflective of some of his previous performances. De Niro is somehow restrained and Liotta is actually quite animated - you don't really know how to feel about this guy, whether to trust him or not.