Sylvester Stallone has no shortage of great performances in his filmography, but his work in Cop Land might just be his best. Sylvester Stallone’s action movie run is one of the greatest of all time, but when he first broke through with Rocky, he was being touted as the next Marlon Brando. The star soon struggled to find material worthy of his abilities, with the likes of Stallone’s directorial debut, Paradise Alley, failing to find audiences. It was Stallone’s work in the first Rambo movie First Blood that altered his career.
Stallone’s near-mute performance saw him speak through his eyes and body language, with the film being an intense survival thriller with thrilling setpieces. Stallone leaned into the film’s success too, and by the time the Rambo sequels and Cobra came around, he became permanently typecast in the genre. Despite attempting to break out with dramas like Lock Up or comedies such as Oscar, his only big hits remained action thrillers. With 1997’s Cop Land, Stallone took one of the biggest swings of his career.
Why Cop Land Is Sylvester Stallone’s Strongest Performance
Stallone deserved an Oscar nomination for his transformative work
Having “retired” from action movies with 1996’s Daylight, Stallone felt it was time to reinvent his screen image. That’s why he went all in for Cop Land, where he plays the rundown sheriff of a small New Jersey town that’s home to a community of corrupt New York cops. Stallone completely shed the screen image he had built up, putting on a lot of weight and playing Sheriff Freddy as a meek fanboy of the big city cops. It’s a transformative piece of acting and one that makes you forget you’re watching Rocky or Rambo.
Freddy is a very internal performance from Stallone, and you absolutely believe he’s the timid pushover the other cops think he is.
Fun as Stallone’s action outings can be, it’s a shame he became so consumed by the genre from the 1980s onwards. Movies like Cop Land and the first couple of Rockys prove he can be an incredible dramatic actor. Freddy is a very internal performance, and you absolutely believe he’s the timid pushover the other cops think he is. It takes a lot of effort for Freddy to stand up and do the right thing, and even when he picks up his sH๏τgun for the final shootout, it never feels like a given that he’ll survive.
In many ways, Stallone succeeded in what he set out to prove with Cop Land. He shed his action star vanity to play a grounded, sympathetic figure, and while some actors seemingly gain weight to signal how committed they were to a role, it feels like a vital part of Freddy’s character that he has let himself go to seed. Despite Cop Land grossing over $63 million and receiving critical praise, the thriller didn’t do much for Stallone’s career at the time.
Why Cop Land Isn’t Talked About As Much As Other Stallone Classics
Cop Land is one of Stallone’s lesser-seen works
It’s genuinely bizarre that despite being a critical and commercial hit that features Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Harvey Keitel and Edie Falco, Cop Land has largely slipped through the cracks. It definitely has its admirers, but compared to the Rocky or Rambo movies, it’s weirdly obscure. Stallone also believes the thriller hurt his career in the long run, as audiences didn’t want to see him as a loser (via Variety).
I loved the film, but it actually worked in reverse. It was pretty good critically, but the fact that it didn’t do a lot of box office, again it fomented the opinion that I had my moment and was going the way of the dodo bird and the Tasmanian tiger. So, I’m gone. Because with “Rocky V,” I should have learned from my predecessors that very few people want to see the dark side of a character they love.
Looking back at Stallone’s post-Copland period, he’s not wrong. Practically every film he fronted between 1997 and 2006 was a bomb, including his Get Carter remake and slasher thriller D-Tox. It was only when he returned for Rocky Balboa that Stallone got the comeback he was seeking. He still stands by the movie and his commitment to making it, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone’s career long commitment to the action genre made it difficult for audiences to accept him in a different light.
The fact that it’s the odd man out on Stallone’s CV might be why Cop Land isn’t as well known as it should be. It still has some action sequences, but Cobra it most definitely is not. Even so, for fans of the screen legend, it is essential viewing.
Source: The Numbers, Variety
