First Trailer for Rampart

The first trailer for Rampart, based on a real LAPD scandal from the 1990s, has been released. We've embedded it below.

Co-written by crime novelist James Ellroy, the film stars Woody Harrelson as a corrupt police officer … and nothing fascinates like a dirty cop. In real life they're terrifying, but in the movies their upending of law and order can open deep explorations of psychology, morality and violence.

So meet Dave Brown. Brown is a cop long ago unleashed from the rules of the Los Angeles Police Department. Roving the streets in his black-and-white cruiser, he governs and punishes at will. His home life is a riddle. Somehow he has fathered children with two sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon). Somehow he still lives casually with them both, slipping in and out of a family life thats as tangled as his long career on the force. His own daughter calls him Date Rape. That's because, years ago, Brown may have killed a rapist and gotten away with it. The shadow of the incident still haunts him, so when his Rampart division gets caught up in a corruption scandal, Brown makes an easy target. As the controversy seeps through the department and into city hall, this hardened, reckless officer finds himself at the center of a sordid L.A. story.

Rampart opens in US theaters on January 27th, 2012.