This weekend has been, with the exception of a horror trip to Leicester to see my awful football team on Saturday afternoon, the great film catch-up.
Our holiday in Gran Canaria enabled me to digest a load of preview DVDs but now I need to catch up on the releases I haven't got at home.
Thus, Friday night after work I took in three movies and yesterday, after football, the same applied.
This is endurance film-watching and is stamina-sapping, so I forgave Mrs W for dropping off a bit during Rampart.
She didn't like Oren Moverman's movie at all, claiming it was slow and predictable.
It was a shame I hadn't had the time to read up on its background beforehand because she loves true stories and, I suspect, would have paid more attention if she had known this was based upon one.
Just to make clear Woody Harrelson's corrupt cop, David Brown, is based on an amalgam of officers among the 70 implicated in misconduct in the late 1990s.
Thus, while he didn't exist, officers like him certainly did.
And that thought is sobering, indeed because this is a cop who, in his own words, isn't a racist, he just doesn't like people.
Harrelson is perfectly cast as Brown a man who has a deep intelligence but whose moral compass is so twisted that it is no longer capable of pointing in straight lines.
He is supported by a superb cast who, while it is fair to say are in his shadow, give the movie an extra dimension.
Robin Wright deserves plaudits as a lawyer who cannot resist his physical attraction and Ned Beatty is impressive as a mentor who is able to extract Brown from sticky situations.
Meanwhile, the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Cynthia Nixon have bit parts.
But, regardless of the rest, this is Harrelson's film and Moverman helps chronicle his descent with a myriad of techniques, including, at one point, a dreamlike sequence in a nightclub which helps focus how far off the rails he has gone.
Mrs W and I were at odds over Rampart. I wasn't particularly taken with the plot but was utterly transfixed by Harrleson.
I would love to know what he is like in real life because it seems he can capture these parts with the same ease that he did when he was the away-with-the-fairies barman in Cheers. Which is the real Woody? Or is he just a superb actor?
Laughs: none
Jumps: two
Vomit: one nasty scene
Nudity: quite a lot.
Overall rating: I'm ignoring the sleeping Mrs W and giving it 7/10
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