Copeland on Arte: Stallone is great in the movie, but the director didn’t want him!

Wanting to protect their families from the violence reigning in the Big Apple, New York police officers settled in Garrison, a neighboring town in New Jersey, overseen by the obedient local sheriff Freddie Heflin, who always dreamed of being one of them. has only the right to regulate traffic there.

After a drunken night out, Murray Babich, an NYPD cop, is walking home when he is chased by two over-excited speakers. Panicked, he shoots them in pursuit.

Investigators went to the scene, and after finding no weapons in the victim’s car, Babic, feeling cornered, plunged into the Hudson River and disappeared. Mo Tilden, a police officer, does not believe that he committed suicide…

In this highly effective thriller orchestrated by James Mangold, Copeland brings together a great ensemble cast: the late Ray Liotta, Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro as an incorruptible cop, Peter Berg…

But the one who caught my eye is Sylvester Stallone, who plays a sheriff who admires the men of the New York Police Department, whose deafness has prevented him from integrating. A far cry from the body-built characters that made her famous, the actress put her crown back into the game, slipping heavily into her character beyond the 20kg she agreed to put on to better portray her role.

“I don’t want him!”

If Stallone’s composition was unanimous, the studio Miramax was concerned about the public reception of his character, too far from the image that the actor had created during his career. Even Mangold was skeptical. “I didn’t want him” He said in an interview with the site IndieWire In November 2011.

“When he was first introduced to me, I was like, ‘Oh my God, no!'” My perception of Sly at the time was, “He’s a friend, and he’d realize that he’s made this series of movies less than his best blockbusters.” , not very comforting for him. He was just kind of an indestructible force in one movie after another. And I was trying to shoot a vulnerable guy who was soft, who can’t pull the trigger – and I get Judge Dredd? “

Mangold adds: “All I put on the table was that I didn’t want to do this movie with him if he was going to control him, I didn’t want to do this movie with him if he was going to change him, and I didn’t want to do this movie with him if he didn’t get fat.” .

Stallone had the opposite reaction to what was expected, much to the director’s delight. He said: This is your film, your script, so we will do exactly what you wrote. And I’m going to gain weight, I want to do it. He was so kind, unlike the others I had approached before. They were not happy to play an unsexy or very volatile character at the center of this film. I finally took it with him. And for a number of reasons, I’m absolutely thrilled about it. “

Sly’s flawless performance, a touch vulnerable and restrained, in a register long unknown to him, was unanimously applauded. Copeland It is also one of the actor’s best films.