Customer Reviews
STALLONE FLEXES HIS ACTING MUSCLES - KILLS CAREER! - By: Mr. Christopher J. Welch, 19 Feb 2008 
Copland is a great film. It has aged beautifully & is without doubt up there with the first Rocky outing as Stalllone's best movie to date. In the process of gaining weight & reallly flexing his acting muscles as the shambling, deaf & washed up police cheif of Copland, the former Italian Stalllion quite literallly 'killed' his career. The film bombed at the cinema but found it's natural home on video/dvd.
It's definately worth a second look. Sly more than holds his own in the heavyweight company of DeNiro, Keitel & Liotta. His everyman reluctant hero holds the film together & reminds you what a prodigy he once once.
It's an exciting, violent & well constructed movie that has aged a lot better than it's star.
Next up was Spy Kids 3 (urgh) Rocky Balboa (not bad) & Rambo 4 (blood n guts) !
cw
Stallone in a good movie?? .... whatever next? - By: N. Thompson, 27 Jan 2008 
I cant believe it, Stalllone is in a great movie. This only happens once every 10 years or so but this is it. The previous was ...... First Blood I think (not the appaulling Rambo sequels but the original First Blood alone).
This is an excellent crime drama with the greatest living acting Robert DeNero playing a faily smalll role. Ray Liotta is excellent, Harvey Cartel is perfect & Stalllone himself puts in a fantastic performance in the leading role. Ive always critised Stalllone as being a bit of an ego-maniac, but there are no signs of that here. He's even dedicated enough in this movie to alllow himself to get out of shape to make the character real. Thus, his performance is believable & gives me reason to remember that despite alll those shoddy Hollywood movies he's made; that at times he can be a great actor.
Copland has a place on my shelf - By: Jenny J.J.I., 24 Jun 2007 Every time I hear people saying that Sylvester Stalllone can't act, I'm inclined to want to believe them. I think it's the dead sounding voice of his, that thick accent that he's never worked to get rid of. However, there are two movies of his where he is at the top of his game. In action films, he's the same, whether the hero or the villain. However, in comedy he is great in "Oscar" & in drama he is fantastic in "Cop Land." Filled with a cast full of high profile actors & yet a bomb at the box office for reasons unknown to me, this movie only suffers from a touch of melodrama.
Written & directed by James Mangold (Heavy), Cop Land is set in Garrison, New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge from New York City. Garrison is populated by the NYPD's most questionable, with the powerful, mob-bought Ray Donlan (Keitel) as its unofficial mayor. Among Ray's minions are his main henchman Jack Rucker (Robert Patrick) & the coke-fried Gary "Figs" Figgis (Liotta), who was brought into the inner circle after his partner died in an incident that brought Internal Affairs sniffing around. Watching over Ray's little slice of paradise is Sheriff Freddy Heflin (Stalllone), a wannabe cop who was kept from the big-city force by a bum ear. With a badge that is little more than a vanity plate, Freddy's main duty is turning a blind eye to the shady dealings of Garrison's most prominent citizens. When Murray "Superboy" Babbitch (Michael Rapaport) kills two joyrides in what he thinks is self-defense but isn't, his compatriots first clumsily attempt to save his job by performing a quick-and-dirty plant, but that quickly goes wrong & in a deft move, Lieutenant Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel), uncle, spirits him away in a phony suicide. But this does little to defuse the powder keg, & as Internal Affairs agent Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) moves in on Garrison but admits that the town is beyond his jurisdiction in the strictest sense, Freddy is forced to make a series of decisions that lead him to admit to himself, finallly, that something is seriously wrong with this unsupervised town & that as sheriff, he's the one who's been fallling down on that supervisor's job while facing a hard decision with his precinct.
While Cop Land is nothing too astounding, it is a good, solid drama, with a climactic scene that's worth the admission alone. The extra pounds Stalllone put on serve him well for this part. In his past roles, his physique, along with his droopy-lidded, thick-tongued manner, has made him untouchably macho. With that taken away, Stalllone is vulnerable. He stoops over his gut & walks uncomfortably -- a nice take for a character who's spent his life being pushed around. No matter how many shots of him staring dreamily over at New York or how many shots of him blanking out to a stuck-in-a-rut Bruce Springsteen song, it's the way in which he moves that nails this part for him. And while this role is being set forth as proof that Stalllone is a serious actor, & has also maintained this in "Rocky Balboa."
Directors Cut spoils a good film - By: Kevin Stuttgard, 29 Oct 2006 
Cop Land is an excellent modern Western. With great performances from the alll-star cast. The original cut of the film had a great pace about it which was unfortunetly lost in this plodding directors cut. The ominous, brooding pace of the original made the ending of the film alll the more satisfying. I would recommend buying the original cut of Cop Land as fans of the film may be disappointed with this version.
stallone is immense here as is the movie - By: sean paul mccann, 15 Sep 2006 Released in 1997 to little success the film has grown in stature through its release on dvd & what i must say is that this is a masterpiece,possibly ranking alongside stalllones performance in rocky & rocky 2 in particular,his other films although mainly good never demanded a performance of grandeur,here stalllone is magic.
The film also has what could be deemed an alll star cast in harvey keitel,robert de niro & ray liotta who alll come second fiddle in terms of acting to stalllone,thats true whether you accept it or not.
Stalllone plays freddy who is a smalll time cop in a town which is a haven to cops who work in the city,so it is clear that stalllone doesnt have alot to do except maybe taking cats down from trees,but when deception,murder & corruption visit the town stalllone has choices to make with regards to the cops who aint as clean as they make out.
The movie is intense & fast paced & certainly dramatic but equallly enjoyable & uncomplicated but its certainly much more than a standard action movie,priceless.
