Cop Land (VHS, 1998)

"Listen to me you deaf #$%&, I gave you a chance to be a cop, back when we could have done something...I gave you a chance to be a cop, AND YOU BLEW IT!!!!!" Right up there with "I coulda been a contender" "Rosebud" and "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse", a classic line in American Cinema.

Copland has been out for ten years now, and it has taken me a long time to appreciate how awesomely bad this movie really is. I mean you have a collection of A List actors, and they come together to deliver such an incredibly awful movie. It is one of those movies that is so bad that it is actually fun to watch.

Robert De Niro gives one of his most memorable performances as IAB detective Moe Tilden. When they write cop movies, they always have to have the internal affairs guy, and DeNiro plays it to the hilt. He won't sleep until someone goes to jail, or until they start putting napkins in with his sandwiches.

Of course anyone in IAB has to have someone they are gunning for, so enter Harvey Keitel playing dirty cop Ray Dolan. Not only is he on the take, he arranges hits to take out cops in Jersey who are just not dirty enough. You don't want go along, you get thrown off a building.

This movie has many laugh out loud moments, and they mostly involve Ray Liotta. He is a great actor, but in this film he just stayed up for a week straight on the bag of coke he had left over from the end of "Goodfellas". Paranoid, strung out, and crazy enough to stick a dart up Robert Patrick's nose.

And of course there is Sly Stallone. Everyone was so excited about this film because it wasn't a stupid action movie that Stallone has been doing for the last 20 years. He really delivers, because you end up feeling sorry for the big lug. His biggest case of the year is investigating the thrown garbage incident. Look for the excitement on his face when he gets the caper.