Beyond the Thin Blue Line

I’ll take a bad cop over a good cop any day. At least in the movies, where morally ambiguous lawmen make for some of the most memorable characters. There are plenty of films where bad cops are the villains, such as Gary Oldman’s baddie in The Professional, Orson Welles as the heavy (literally) in A Touch of Evil, and Hal Holbrook’s foil to Dirty Harry in Magnum Force. And there are the films where the good cop swims upstream against corruption, notably Cop Land, Serpico and The Departed. But I prefer the films that give you a lawman that’s difficult to both love and loathe. Usually these movies offer up a complex character that requires a very strong performance in order to work.

This weekend, on the recommendation of a friend, I watched a great example in the under-the-radar cop/crime drama Cement. The 1999 film features the late Chris Penn as Bill Holt, a cop who’s up to his eyeballs in graft money and kick-backs. The story starts with him at a construction site, where he’s slowly encasing a guy in a cement column. Told from the viewpoint of his drug-addled, equally dirty, but still more morally sound partner (played by Jeffrey Wright, who appeared in Casino Royale as Felix), the narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks. We learn that Holt’s longstanding arrangement with local gangsters is in trouble because $75 000 has gone missing. We also find out that his wife (played by Sherilyn Fenn) is sleeping with one of the gangsters. A series of events, initiated by Holt, leads to bloody revenge all around.

The beefy Penn is frightening as a loose-cannon-with-a-hair-trigger, who drinks too much and jokes around  a lot but can turn on a dime – that unpredictable violence that characterizes Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas. He’s a sweaty, trigger-happy hulk full of self-loathing, and all it takes is him finding out the truth about his wife to push him over the edge.

It’s not a perfect film by any means – some of the gangster characters are overwrought, for example – but Penn’s performance anchors it. It’s well worth seeking out, if for no other reason than to see him rage across the screen.

If you’re looking for additional bad movie cops, here are my five fave movies in the same vein, with links to the trailers.

 

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Harvey Keitel plays the baddest of bad cops in Abel Ferra’s bleak character study of what the tagline efficiently describes as a “Gambler. Thief. Junkie. Killer. Cop.” Plus, if you’ve always wanted to see some full frontal Keitel (and, gee, who hasn’t?), this film’s most notorious scene (after the one where he pleasures himself in front of a girl he’s pulled over) has him suffering a mental breakdown in the buff. The movie ultimately questions whether or not he’s beyond redemption.

 

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

The Werner Herzog in-name-only sequel again centres around a train-wreck of a detective, but Nicholas Cage plays this less despicable cop for both pathos and laughs, making his downward spiral a lot more entertaining. Plus, Herzog’s wonderfully weird touches (random iguanas, break dancer hallucinations, etc.) make for a bad lieutenant who’s strange man in an even stranger land.

 

Insomnia (1997)

No, not the remake with Al Pacino – the original Norwegian crime thriller has Stellan Skarsgård playing a cop who’s way more morally compromised than his Hollywood counterpart. As his character investigates a murder in a small town way up north (during 24-hour daylight, making this a reverse film noir), he not only covers up his accidental killing of his partner, he gets creepy with an underage girl and fights against the guilt-ridden insomnia that’s wearing down his judgment as he pursues the killer. He’s the most complex dirty cop of the bunch here.

 

Narc (2002)

Henry Oak is the greatest name ever for a thick, violent snapcase like the one played by Ray Liotta in Narc. The guy is anger incarnate as he relentlessly pursues a cop killer, while his new partner – played by Jason Patric – discovers that he’s hiding a terrible secret. Patric is the star, but Liotta’s red-faced, vein-popping performance is goddamned scary.

 

Training Day (2001)

Similarly, although Ethan Hawke stars here, Denzel Washington steals the show as a veteran narcotics officer showing Hawke’s character the ropes on the frontline of the drug war. Washington’s Oscar-winning performance as the bombastic, narcissistic, line-crossing Alonzo is nearly Shakespearian (and, admittedly, close to self-parody). While the other dirty cops on this list are close to the edge or over it, Alonzo is frightening and fascinating because he cruises around like he’s invincible, and you kinda hope that he is.

 

-Dave Alexander

Comments

Now that the Oscar's are done, maybe someone should get busy and bring down the obnoxious, irritating producers and directors putting out these low class 'hand-held camera' movies. They are ridiculous and cause eyes to go cross-eyed and give people headaches trying to follow all the jittery up-down side to side, odd angles nonsense. If it's money they're trying to save, find another way please, and cease to annoy movie lovers with this poop. Talk about actors with no talent, try evaluating the hand held camera operators. A three-year-old would save them more money.