Woody (Harrelson) Is Wonderful in “Rampart”

Woody Harrelson portrays a very bad cop in "Rampart."

Woody Harrelson’s new movie with director Owen Moverman, “Rampart,” is just as intense as “The Messenger,” which co-starred Ben Foster (Russell on television’s “Six Feet Under”). The poster carried the slogan: “The most corrupt cop you’ve ever seen onscreen.”

Those are big shoes to fill. Especially when we have such excellent predecessors as Richard Gere in “Internal Affairs,” Denzel Washington in “Training Day,” Harvey Keitel in “Bad Lieutenant,” Nicolas Cage in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” Ethan Hawke in “Brooklyn’s Finest” and Matt Damon in “The Departed.”

“Rampart” opens wide on February 17, 2012. The cast includes Harrelson and Foster, together again, plus Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Heche, Ice Cube, Cynthia Nixon, Robin Wright and Steve Buscemi.

Harrelson’s performance is a tour de force. He is definitely not a good cop, but he has standards that harken back to an earlier day. As veteran cop Ned Beatty tells him, “This isn’t your father’s LAPD.” Ben Foster, who helped Woody deliver the messages that a loved one was dead in combat in Moverman’s “The Messenger,” is almost unrecognizable (and irrelevant) as a paraplegic in a wheelchair  (General Terry).

Dave Brown’s nickname in the department is “Date Rape Dave” because he cold-bloodedly murdered a business acquaintance he knew had date-raped several girls. He also married two sisters, consecutively. Each couple had a daughter. They are all living under one roof when the movie opens.

Cynthia Nixon plays Barbara and Anne Heche plays Catherine. (This may be the first time two lesbian actresses were hired to play sister wives.) At the height of the film, in one of the most intense scenes, Catherine screams at Dave (Harrelson), calling him a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a misanthrope, a womanizer and homophobic. His own oldest daughter, Helen, (Brie Larson) tells him, “You are a dinosaur, Date Rape.”

When Woody confesses to his daughters, “Every single thing you’ve heard and more, it’s true. I could never change. But I never hurt any good people,” his teen-aged daughter Helen (Brie Larson) says, “What about us?”

On IMDB (International Movie Data Base) this message appeared: “I just saw the screener. They better fix the ending.” Very, very true. Just as Francis Ford Coppola sweated bullets over a satisfactory ending for “Apocalypse Now,” the writers/director (James Ellroy and Oren Moverman) have come up short at the end of this otherwise fine film. For whatever reason(s), the ending is totally unsatisfactory. It just…ends.

It’s really a shame, because the performances of the fine cast and the intensity of Harrelson’s lead role are spot-on. Just when we are anticipating the much-discussed “Rampart” investigation of police corruption (“a shitstorm of epic proportions”), with Date Rape Dave one of its main targets (“Someone like me is more dangerous on the witness stand than on the street.”) there is an abrupt end to what had been a promising follow-up to Moverman’s “The Messenger.”