Cop Land

Cop Land (1997) is James Mangold's crime drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Partial deafness kept Freddy Heflin out of the police, so he settled for sheriff of a quiet New Jersey town where off-duty NYPD officers make their homes.

Sylvester Stallone plays Freddy heavy, slow and quietly worshipful of the cops next door. He idolizes them right up until Internal Affairs investigator Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) rolls into town chasing a shooting that the locals would rather bury. The deeper Freddy digs, the more the picture turns: his heroes cover for each other, and the calm streets sit on top of mob money and falsified reports. Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel fill out the ranks of men who decided long ago that the law was someone else's problem.

Mangold staged the whole thing like a small-town Western — one decent man squaring off against the community he spent his life protecting. Stallone put on weight and dropped the action-hero swagger for what may be the finest dramatic work of his career. Stream Cop Land (1997) online on iFILM.