In Copland, Sylvester Stallone torches the buff physique he thought so integral to his persona to "act".  Does he succeed?  Well, Stallone gets a mixed review.  He gives the most genuine performance of his career since Rocky but his performance is also too subdued and monolithic.

    Copland is about a precinct of dirty cops that gets the mob to finance a town called Garrison (a.k.a. Copland) in New Jersey so these bad boys in blue have a "decent" place to raise their families.  The cops run into trouble when one of their own kills two black teenagers in a drunken fog and they fake this cop's death to help him avoid prison.

    Although Stallone plays the good-hearted but slow-witted town sheriff, Freddy Heflin, the town is really run by Ray Donlan, the real power in Copland, who is magnificently played by Harvey Keitel.  Keitel does corrupt, especially corrupt cops, like no one I've ever seen  - his pores ooze sleaze and there seems not even a shred of his soul that is left for redemption.  Now, this might seem to be a one-note performance to some but Keitel does it so well that this is not the case (And Gigi usually prefers characters whose evil is swirled with wholesomey goodness.)  Keitel's character offers as some sort of ironic justification for creating Copland the statement that they have to work in a city where the cops are the perps and the perps are the victims - It is a great line and basically sums up these characters:  their racism, their sense of entitlement, and their corruption.  Robert DeNiro also stars as an Internal Affairs officer trying to nab these corrupt cops.  DeNiro does a competent job her but it's nothing special.  Ray Liotta, looking very bloated, is adequate as a bad cop who gets fed up with this bizarro way of life  (And is the only character who provides one minor plot twist).

    Copland does an interesting job in creating a 70s atmosphere in this film from the violence to the clothing, hairstyles (And you know that means lots of hair for the guys in this flick.) and the music.  The violence is realistic in your face action.  Guess what, when someone fires a bullet, someone actually gets shot.  How refreshing!   I am frankly sick of what I'll call "A-Team"  style violence where characters are in machine gun battles for 20 minutes and no one takes a hit.

    I liked Copland and am recommending it although it is not a great film.  Copland seems slow-paced and almost passive at times and Stallone never really makes me root for his character.  But, the movie's atmosphere is worth the price of a ticket.