Much has been made of Sylvester Stallone's attempt to eschew his macho hero persona and return to serious acting with the police drama "Cop Land" — he took no money up front, he put on 30 pounds for the role, he's on screen with the likes of Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel . . . .

But in the end, none of that really matters. What does matter is whether "Cop Land" works as a character-driven drama and whether Stallone is merely a distraction. Happily, the film works quite well, and Stallone is terrific in the lead.

Stallone plays Freddy Heflin, a deputy sheriff in fictional Garrison, N.J., who is essentially a straw cop. He may give out traffic tickets to people who zip through town, but it's hands-off as far as the locals are concerned.

Garrison, dubbed by those in the know as "Cop Land," is populated by the families of Manhattan police officers who cross the George Washington Bridge every day, keeping their private and professional lives separate. And they make the rules.

Freddy's lifelong dream has been to get on the New York City force, but a hearing impairment has forced him to take this job, which he reasons is the next best thing. But no matter how much he hangs out at the local bar where the "real cops" gather, Freddy knows he's an outsider.

The main plot kicks in when an off-duty officer named Murray (Michael Rapaport) has a run-in with some kids on the bridge, which results in two deaths. He's about to see his career go down in flames until a veteran cop, his Uncle Ray (Harvey Keitel), steps in with an unlikely plan — Murray will fake suicide and be hustled out of town.

In truth, however, Ray has more sinister things in mind. As one of Garrison's ruling residents, he has a lot of family secrets to conceal.

Eventually, when an Internal Affairs cop (Robert De Niro) takes an interest in Garrison and Murray's "suicide," Freddy must decide whether to risk his life to do the right thing or to simply turn the other way, as he has done so often in the past.

He gets some help from one of Ray's corrupt cops (Ray Liotta), and there are subplots about Freddy's love for Liz (Annabella Sciorra), whose life he saved when they were teenagers (a daring underwater rescue that resulted in his partial hearing loss), and an affair between Liz's husband (Peter Berg) and Ray's wife (Cathy Moriarty).