Stalones career tanked after Copland where he played a cop who was not on the take but because he took a blind eye to it. Hmmm I might have to watch with Awakened Eyes.
Heflin doesn’t quite seem to fit in anywhere. He is partially-deaf as a result of saving a girl from drowning, the impairment having prevented him from becoming a big city cop. He gazes across the Hudson River and dreams of making it there, while protecting the neighbourhood of the cops who work there. Similarly, Stallone stands out like a sore thumb on the film’s poster, flanked by Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. These acting heavyweights were still turning out acclaimed work with the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, while Stallone was only just returning to the game, eager to prove himself. When Heflin is denied entry to a party by Keitel’s Ray Donlan, his concerns wholly dismissed, the chasm between the actors is hard to ignore. But Donlan underestimates Heflin, just as many have underestimated Stallone down the years.
While Heflin doesn’t profit from the corruption that Donlan and several other officers indulge in, he is complicit by sharing their indifference for these illegalities. “Their ambivalence is contagious”, Internal Affairs agent Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) warns him, and he’s right to note both Heflin’s and Stallone’s greatest opponent: inertia. Heflin’s heroic rescue, which he refers to as “the best thing I ever did with my life”, is long in the past, much like Stallone’s own glory days. Before becoming overshadowed by the patriotic melodrama of their sequels, Rocky and First Blood were human stories bolstered by excellent writing and acting.
https://lwlies.com/articles/copland-sylvester-stallone-legacy/