Sylvester Stallone stars as Freddy Hefflin, the fat, sad and bored Sheriff of Garrison, a small New Jersey town inhabited by NYPD cops. Hefflin would want to be a real cop, but an hearing problem keeps him off the force. So he just keeps on doing his job without enthusiasm. He doesn’t even seem to notice that the town of Garrison is extremely corrupted. It will take an Internal investigator played by Robert De Niro to make Stallone move his lard ass.

This film has an interesting story and James Mangold’s direction is very good. The actors are well directed and some scenes (the bloody finale, for example) are riveting. On the other hand, Mangold has some problems with the pacing/editing of his film. Some intense scenes are thrown away too fast, and the storyline is somehow confused. But the cast is really a treat. Stallone is very fun to watch as an anti-Stallone character. Fat, wimpy, depressed. Stallone proves that he can act well. Of course, he’s nowhere near De Niro, who’s excellent as always, alternately funny, powerful and fascinating. He steals every scene. The rest of the cast (Harvey Keitel, Michael Rapaport, Ray Liotta, Janeane Garofalo and others ) is strong too.

Overall, try as it might, this isn’t as good as a Scorsese film, but it’s still a compelling picture.