Sylvester Stallone says he did "Cop Land" because he wanted to break out of the action mold. That's a sensible goal for a man who has plunged deep into self-parody as Hollywood's embodiment of embodiment. But for much of this tedious melodrama, which was written and directed by James Mangold, you wonder if he'll break out of the inaction mold.

Mr. Stallone plays Freddy Heflin, the passive sheriff of Garrison, N. J., a bedroom town in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge. (Passive and paunchy; the actor put on almost 40 pounds for the part.) Among Garrison's commuter residents is a gaggle of crooked New York City cops who run the tiny town in league with the mob. They have nothing but scorn for poor Freddy, a wannabe who could never pass the NYPD physical; he lost his hearing in one ear as a teenager, while saving a girl from drowning. But Freddy worships them all the same.

It's hard to tell if the sheriff is an exceptionally poor observer who hasn't noticed how dirty these rogue cops are, or if he has simply spent decades looking the other way (and turning a deaf ear; this film deals symbols like cheap drugs). Either way, Freddy starts as a pitiful punching bag for other cops, in the same way that Mr. Stallone's grand invention, Rocky Balboa, started as a punching bag for other boxers. And just as Rocky redeemed himself with almost superhuman courage, Freddy redeems himself too, finally awakening to the realities of an incipient police scandal and summoning up the almost superhuman courage of a maimed colossus.

"Cop Land" is ingenious enough as a contemporary version of a classic western theme--one good man against a corrupt town. But it isn't much fun, unless you like your movies whipped stiff into moral meringue. Except for the showdown, it's woefully short on dramatic energy, as distinct from solemn, scrunch-faced speechifying by a supporting cast that includes Harvey Keitel as the rogue of rogues, Ray Liotta as a city cop beset by scruples, and Robert De Niro as the man from NYPD Internal Affairs who crosses the bridge--that is to say, Crosses the Bridge--to investigate the scandal. What's fascinating about this film, though, is how the relatively inexperienced Mr. Mangold got to make it, and what Mr. Stallone's participation says about the unbearable heaviness of being famous.

Heavy is the operative word, in more ways than two. "Heavy" is the title of James Mangold's first feature--his only feature before Mr. Stallone signed up to play the lead in "Cop Land" for scale, rather than his customary $20 million fee. (Once Stallone had committed, Keitel, Liotta and De Niro came on board.) Mr. Mangold's script for "Heavy" told the thin tale of an overweight pizza chef's hopeless love for a beautiful waitress. True to the title, his direction was ponderous, lugubrious and obvious. Yet small, independent features like "Heavy" are often praised extravagantly, either for their own virtues or for how little they resemble Hollywood's usual crass output. The movie won Mr. Mangold a prize for best direction at the Sundance Film Festival, and earned many ecstatic reviews. (The Toronto Globe & Mail called it a "near masterwork.")

If this filmmaker had followed a conventional career course, his next gig might have been another marginal feature. Instead, Mr. Mangold's script for "Cop Land" found its way to Sylvester Stallone, and the rest was movie history. But hadn't Mr. Stallone checked out "Heavy"? Didn't he know what he was getting into? Of course he had, and of course he did. Judging from his sluggish performance in "Cop Land," he must have seen that earlier film's ponderousness as seriousness, its lugubriousness as a hallmark of integrity. There's something sad in the spectacle of this battle-scarred superstar blimped up for a new departure, yet recapitulating his first success by playing still another nobody trying to be a somebody. Rocky was a real somebody with a real dream. So was the man who made him.


"The Full Monty" may be a one-joke wonder, but the joke is as good as it is broad, and the movie manages to sustain it with singular generosity and touching tact. The most literal meaning of the title is "the whole thing" or "all the way," as in strippers stripping past their G-strings. But for the exotic dancers here, the great debate is whether to shed their jock straps. They are five unemployed Yorkshiremen who've decided to raise some desperately needed cash, and their own morale, by turning themselves into homegrown Chippendales.

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Once you know the premise you can imagine some of the action, and the simian grace. Yet the movie itself goes all the way, with zestful direction by Peter Cattaneo, in his feature debut; elegantly unfussy photography by John de Borman; a richly detailed script by Simon Beaufoy; and at least three superb performances. Robert Carlyle, the dynamo who played the psychopath Begbie in "Trainspotting," is Gaz, the group's edgy, flaky organizer. Tom Wilkinson's Gerald is middle-aged, with a demanding wife and a lawn full of plastic gnomes. Mark Addy is Dave, a flabby and reluctant chorine who's impotent off stage and terrified on. Of the three, Dave is the most vulnerable, and the best reminder that men can be as tender as women when it comes to sagging flesh. As vulnerability leads to camaraderie, these fancy dancers find another meaning of the full monty: All the way as in doing something right, for the first time in their lives.

Video Tip

Spencer Tracy probed a town's guilty secret in John Sturges's "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955). See it, if you can, in letterbox format on laserdisk.