Cinemas Greatest Scenes: De Niro vs. Stallone: “I offered you a chance to be a cop and you blew it!” (Cop Land, 1997).

This is not the first entry that sees a Sylvester Stallone film here in my series. That honour went to Rocky (1976) and its timeless rags-to-riches story about a kind-hearted working class Italian-American boxer. More specifically we focused on its iconic training montage scene which concludes on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Arts. A new entry featuring Stallone has been on my mind for a while now. And here it is, a very worthy scene, which is often singled out as an internet meme. But first let’s play good cop, bad cop in service of setting up this current entry.

Stallone was in the right place at the right time when he made Rocky. But by allowing the Rocky and Rambo franchises to take up so much of his career, I feel like it was a disservice in the end. Stallone is not a bad actor, after all he has been nominated for an Academy award for Best Actor (Rocky) and Best Supporting Actor (Creed). Stallone’s problem with fans and critics is that he has a seemingly limited range as an actor. Either that or no one has really ever given him a go, except maybe filmmaker James Mangold. Interestingly, Mangold didn’t initially want Stallone for his crime drama Cop Land (1997). But he changed his mind when Stallone promised not to interfere with his vision. That said, I believe Cop Land largely works, especially because of Stallone nuanced and against-type performance.

So anyway why do I like Stallone performance in Cop Land? Well, there are a many reasons but primarily because he apparently checked his ego at the door for the role. Moreover he made himself mortal for a change (vulnerable), forsaking his tough guy exterior, to play a likeable but lost, overweight small town sheriff (suffering from unilateral hearing loss), who couldn’t cut it as an NYPD officer. Subsequently, because of his shortcomings Stallone’s Freddy Heflin is mocked by a group of corrupt New York cops who just happen to live in his tiny town of Garrison. (The ringleader of the dirty cops in Garrison, Lieutenant Ray Donlan is played by Harvey Keitel. Other notable actors as dirty cops includes Ray Liotta, Peter Berg, Robert Patrick and Michael Rapaport.) Moreover, right under his nose, these dirty cops seemingly operate unchecked. It’s not because Heflin is corrupt, he’s just blind to their abuse of power and corruption. Even when he does suspect that something is amiss, he still gives them the benefit of the doubt because he foolishly respect them. Moreover even when he is challenged by Internal Affairs Bureau investigator Lieutenant Moe Tilden (Robert De Nero) to help him clean up the town, Heflin refuses to get involved, until one day he can’t ignore it anymore. This is where we now find ourselves with my current entry for Cinemas Greatest Scenes with Helfin finally awake from his ignorant slumber.

The scene in question begins with Heflin finally deciding to take a stand against the corruption in his town. He realises he has made a mistake rebuffing Tilden’s request for help. Swallowing his pride he barges in unannounced into Tilden’s Internal Affairs office to find the Lietenant having lunch. He apologies and begins to layout the reasons why he is wrong and how Tilden was right about the dirty cops right under his nose. Tilden is visibly irritated by Heflin, firstly for disturbing him on his lunch break, but more importantly for coming back to him at the eleventh hour, especially after the mayor had already shut down the investigation. It’s here that Tilden looks at Helfin in the face and sneers, “Hand are tied now, you shut me down.” But Helfin isn’t satisfied. He’s unwilling to accept that it’s over. He keeps pushing the point until Tilden finally explodes. “Listen, you deaf fuck. I offered you a chance when we could have done something. I offered you a chance to be a cop and you blew it! You blew it!”

Tilden’s rant is unsurprisingly met with utter silence. Helfin looks defeated. He pauses for a long moment before walking to the office door. He opens it and says, “You people are all the same.’ And slams it shut. Tilden looks at his colleague and it finally hits him, “That cupcake makes a mess, Tilden cynically retorts, “and we got a case again.”

This scene plays out for some two minutes, but it’s enough for De Niro to show us his class as an actor. It’s a scene stealing performance with him chewing away and spitting his lunch at Stallone. But arguably what really makes this scene so great is when he delivers that one killer line. “You blew it.” It says everything we need to know about the two characters and their antagonistic relationship. While De Niro’s performance is glowing, let’s not forget how he got there. Stallone to his credit went toe to toe with De Niro pushing him at every turn during this scene. In a recent sit down on GQ’s video channel Stallone elaborate on how he riled up De Niro because he wasn’t giving his best performance for the scene. “I could feel it, (he) just wasn’t,” Stallone said. “I kept ad libbing and irritating him, until finally he gave me something. He gave me De Niro.”