Director : Chris Fisher
Producer : David Hillary, Timothy Wayne Peternel, Ash R. Shah
Screenwriter : Chris Fisher, Gil Reavill, Eric Saks
Starring Cuba Gooding Junior, Clifton Collins Jr., Keith David, Aimee Garcia, Cole Hauser, Wyclef Jean
That's "dirty" as in cops. And that's "cops" as in LAPD. If you wanted to
depict this stained organization in the worst possible light, don't bother,
it's been done -- to death. And here it is again, rising up like a ghoul from
the grave -- from the pen of Chris Fisher and Gil Reavill, directed by the
former. The picture they give us of this organization is that there's no hope
Chief Bratton's corps will ever clean up its act.
We follow the frantic, out-of-control maneuvers of two cops in particular,
Salim Adel (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr.). These
are two law enforcement officers out of the barrio, familiar with its culture
and the scummy men who run it. But paragons of law they are not, and they have
about as much resistance to corruption as a tin badge in seawater.
Of the two, Sancho is the pensive, conscientious one. Adel is more inclined to
scam the system and be part of whatever cover-up is needed in order to take
what he can from it. He's a full service exploiter of the rich and poor, the
homies, the kingpins, the scam artists. Morally, a lost cause, dissing the
uniform.
When they wake up this day, they are facing Internal Affairs for a bad shooting
by Sancho. Sancho is inclined to tell the truth; Adel is not. And the captain,
supported by the Lieutenant (Cole Hauser), is pretty much smearing it up in
slide-through grease to protect his men and their turf. The police department
in Los Angeles is being characterized as just another brutal and depraved
gangster enterprise.
For awhile, Sancho is our anchor of decency, and our hope for a redemption
based on truth and courage. Well before the picture ends, however, he loses his
grip and the main casualty is our hope for him and for the picture. While it's
good to see Cuba Gooding Jr. acting without animal co-stars, and Clifton
Collins in a role with more than usual promise, you can't get behind a story
without someone to feel kinship with, to root for, to care about. That
opportunity is flushed down the drain by Chris Fisher's mess of a script.
There's no bonding in this arrest.
Technical categories of filmmaking are handled well, but carelessness in the
story and character exaggerations defeat artistic potentials and will be a
challenge for commercial prospects--even with a total budget of $3 million.
Which probably accounts for why it was sentenced so quickly to the DVD bin.
The LAPD may not be such a good target for depicting hopelessly perverse police
conduct these days, after the lessons of the Rampart Street scandals and the
installation of a new chief in Los Angeles, but this attempt to exploit it is
poppin' blanks at too many turns to be honest. It isn't much more than a worn
out, barely TV-level theme riddled with cheap shots.
| Write for us |
" Terrible "
Rating: R, 2005
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