Turn the coin Woody Harrelson did not like the early version of the Bastion editing at all – the film seemed too far from the script, either because of excessive improvisations on the set, or because of the camera’s focus on scenes not related to the main line of the story.
The story of dirty cop Dave Brown from the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department Bastion revolves around two or three incidents that became public in the late 90s. An amateur video in which Brown tirelessly kicks a simple black guy, caused a storm of indignation of the public, who witnessed with their own eyes the vivid embodiment of the word “racism”. But Oren Moverman, who invited Harrelson to the role of a cop, does not give the viewer a chance to savor the scandalous exposure with an indispensable jury trial, but makes you look at the incident through the eyes of Dave himself.
For him, already battered and slightly emaciated by everyday life, the ill-fated video breaks life into “before” and “after”. Dave still, as in the previous 24 years of work, sometimes violates the charter. Still tired after work, the policeman looks for an outlet in the circle of a strange family, where each of the two sisters gave birth to his daughter. And, not finding, goes on a night flight "bar - motel".
Suddenly, for Dave himself, the coin of indifference reveals its downside - rejection with his "heartfelt" conversations with the assistant district attorney, the harsh pressure of the internal investigation and a sharp change in attitude in his home. In one key scene, two daughters visit Dave in a filmed room to discover who their father is. A few steps to the beloved one a month ago, the popes stretch to many miles of desert isolation, heated by public opinion.
His truth, worked out by difficult life experience, is not only the last stronghold of a lonely cop, but also the support of Moverman, who paved a narrow path in this story between judgment and sympathy. A month before the warm reception of the picture in Toronto, the actor revised the tape in its final version and called it “one of the most wonderful things” in his long career.
7 out of 10
Original