Colors - Farben der Gewalt

Until I checked this out on IMDB, I had no idea that Dennis Hopper was the director. Wow, that says a lot about his directing ability.

In a void, this movie might not be great. Someone from the UK complained about it. I'm not from Compton but, this movie rates up there with the other true-to-lifers like Boyz in the Hood, and other gang related "classics" (as they deserve to be called).

This is a great movie with great acting and a great plotline. It's a pretty realistic view (again, I'm not a gang banger, so maybe my view is skewed) of the gang life in L.A. And it was the first to really portray it... I'm still a big fan of Boyz in the Hood (not for excitement, but for a good story about a tough life). But this was the first (as I recall) and Hopper deserves a great deal of credit for that. Penn and Duvall are fantastic actors and both come through in a big way in this movie.

My personal opinion: This movie has been, by far, underrated...

An experienced cop (Robert Duvall) and his rookie partner (Sean Penn) patrol the streets of East Los Angeles while trying to keep the gang violence under control.

Looking back now (2017), this film seems so normal, something that could be included in a long list of L.A. gang movies, with the Crips and Bloods fighting it out for turf. We all know about "gangsta rap" and Compton and South Central and all of that. But then you look at the date this film was released -- 1988 -- and you see that all these things we take for granted had never been explored in any detail before. (Merriam-Webster, for example, does not even think the term "gangsta rap" was invented until 1989, even if Schoolly D and Ice-T were already around.)

Although it is probably not true that "Colors" is the first film about gang violence in Los Angeles, it was probably the most influential at the time it came out. Allegedly, some reviews found it even hard to believe that gangs existed in L.A. -- that is just how novel the premise was. Director Dennis Hopper does an excellent job in laying out what these neighborhoods are like and really tackles the crack epidemic head on.

The original script by Richard DiLello (best known as a Beatles historian) actually took place in Chicago (the traditional gang stronghold) and was more about drug dealing than individual gang members. Hopper ordered changes, so Michael Schiffer was hired and the setting was changed to Los Angeles with the focus of the story becoming more about the day-to-day world of gang members. This switch may be the single best decision Hopper made while developing and shooting the film.

What makes the film valuable today, besides its historic aspect, is seeing just how great the casting was, too. Don Cheadle before he was widely known. Tony Todd before "Candyman". Damon Wayans before his entire family became big stars. Even a young Mario Lopez shows up. The idea of having a white kid (Courtney Gains) in a Latino gang seems strange, but as Gains himself says, that was written into the script and he just happened to be lucky enough to get the part.

Thanks to Shout! Factory and their Shout Select label, we now have the full, uncut film on Blu-ray, looking great and sounding fantastic. The Herbie Hancock score is dynamite, to say the least. Special features are a little bit slim, unfortunately -- no commentary and not a single actor interview -- but we do have a look back at both the writing process and the gang situation in 1980s Los Angeles.

When it first came out, it was probably a C movie to all but the kids who watched it, and fell in love with crip and blood culture.

Almost 40 years later, the additions of 'cultural relevance' and a creatively stagnant film industry makes it all the more entertaining.

Somehow, this movie felt dated in '95 - but in '22 is the only one of its genre still watchable. A paradox. Clearly, Penn and Duvall are timeless.

It should be noted, for historical purposes, this movie led to crip and blood gangs popping up all over America; and with the proliferation of gangsta rap - brought about the 90s gangsta culture that ruined millions of lives.

Younger generations can equate it to how much biker culture grew after Sons of Anarchy became popular.

Consider the range and the capture of characters in one movie, Colors delivers multiple plot lines from a number of sides.

I remember when this movie first came out I was in Jr. high school. Colors was a controversial movie talked about by teachers, principles and parents because, believe it or not, it had a tendency for glorification and encouraging gang membership.

To my surprise, the movie has little glorification in it and was a grim summary of Los Angeles gang life (and even that of law enforcement.) The movie does not spoon feed its audience, save for a few minor comments that were cheesy at their worst and cleverly woven in at their best.

In some cases the portrayal of gang life in LA might have been TOO broad and sophisticated for many viewers. The title COLORS and its implication was meant to explain the rival Crip and Blood gangs but in fact that was merely a pretext. Soon into the movie the viewer is taken into various other neighborhoods as well as other gangs, including WHITE FENCE and 21st Street.

For those that denounce this movie as being outdated, cheesy or otherwise, it's hard for me to understand what you are paying attention to. If you remember the 80's in the slightest, it was a time of decadent and flamboyant neon glow ala Prince, Michael Jackson and various other nonsense. The irony is that COLORS portrays a world that was virtually isolated and separate from the 80's because that is what it was MEANT to point out. This was gang life at its peak, before any of the gangster rap hit white suburbia and became a marketable fad. This was BEFORE white folks thought it was cool. It was isolated from the look and feel of the rest of the 80's because this world was isolated from the general population.

For this reason I am surprised that anyone would call the movie outdated in any way. "Timeless" is the word I use to describe it.

Despite all this, Hopper manages to incorporate the storyline between Duval and Penn. Not only is this a brilliant interaction between two great actors, it also has a more marketable value to a white audience that would otherwise have been turned off by the subject matter and considered it, unfairly, as a "blacksploitation" film. Let's face it, Hollywood is big business. The ability to market this movie with ANY semblance of a good plot line but making it even remotely realistic is an amazing achievement.

Hopper goes beyond doing both. I would not be surprised to see this movie in the classics section, someday.

Dennis Hopper's film Colors may seem like hundreds of miles removed from his first feature as director Easy Rider, but it's made twenty years later and it shows effectively at least two things on his part: first, that he can express himself in material that would appear to be a "for-hire" work, specifically with having an older, calmer version of himself in Duvall (the kind that tries to think things through and can be ferocious but has experience from a life of work) and Penn (the young hot-head who you know is good but is troubled in other ways), and secondly that he can go back to some of his earliest acting roots, working in movies featuring rebels and gangs (not least of which Rebel Without a Cause) and actually give them the fire and energy and as-much-as-possible realism so desperately needed. Colors is a mature work from a filmmaker who knows what he's doing, and will let the actors and the mood of the streets and the temperament of the current events (which were practically untenable in the late 80s and early 90s in gang-banger) LA.

Matter of fact, this should have been Hopper's professional calling-card, showing that he can make a film that isn't an art-film or too experimental (Last Movie) or under the radar (Out of the Blue). Indeed you'd have to remind most people that Hopper even directed it since, frankly, he lets his stars steal the show, and rightfully so. There's not a solid plot to speak of, more-so a character study of two cops, one older one younger, who are partnered up and have to tackle the ghettos and slums, loaded with "Blue" (Crips) and "Red") (Bloods), and also the various Hispanic gangs that are not as notorious but still as powerful and dangerous.

It's a series of pieces that soon take shape into a story, but it's not even about that. It's just about following these gangs and being true to their nature: of their rites of passage (beating up the new kids and setting them off to prove themselves), their bond and codes, their can-do attitude even when they're behind bars or in hand-cuffs, and the collective wisdom that you can either talk to a cop or just run... or, another alternative, shoot. It's also about a value system and class differences; the former relating, of course, to Hodges (Duvall) and Penn, who don't see eye to eye on how to apprehend suspects or treat them. Penn's younger guy isn't a crooked cop or corrupted, but he's a hot-head, a junkie for adrenaline, while Duvall's been around the block way too many times (and even admits that he had a higher post before and is still on the streets for reasons not totally made clear) to put up with being "like a gangster" as he says.

And the class part relates to the difference between McGavin (Penn) and his supposed girlfriend, who comes from the Latino parts of the hood and has family that Hodges has come in contact with as a cop, putting them up against the wall. It's through this that we see the split between the people in Lost Angeles, and while it's not a subtle point really (and may even be one of the more cliché things in the picture), it still goes a way to try and add immediacy to the drama, and McGain's own personal conflicts on the streets. And, again, those gangs, some played by actors (Don Cheadle and Damon Wayans in early roles, Sy Richardson), others by I would assume real gang-bangers and people 'from the streets' (another thing Hopper is good at, casting real people, which he doesn't get enough credit for), that are allowed to be fleshed out and made into real people, or as real as they can be in this movie.

The filmmakers don't make us feel sympathy for the gang members, but through making them human beings as opposed to just targets and caricatures, it adds to the whole experience of being about something. Nothing here is exploited; it's a well-researched time-capsule that still holds its own years later, least as long as there are crips and bloods and other gangs and, you know, hot-headed cops with old-timer veterans. Very solid, professional film-making.