Dirty

In a Los Angeles dominated by violent gangs and a corrupt LAPD Precinct, the dirty Officer Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr.) is haunted by his guilty since an innocent old man was accidentally killed in an operation with his also dirty partner Salim Adel (Cuba Gooding Jr.). The Internal Affairs is pressing Sancho, who feels split between the loyalty to his mates and his conscience, and he has to make a statement at 6:00 PM. When his superiors Captain Spain (Keith David) and his Lieutenant (Cole Hauser) assign the two cops for an operation dealing drugs apprehended by the police and stored as evidence with a powerful drug dealer, Sancho feels that something is wrong and they have been framed.

"Dirty" has a promising beginning, with the chain of thoughts of Officer Sancho about corruption ("With power came responsibility; with responsibility came opportunity; with opportunity came corruption, a plague where everybody gets sick"). His dramatic feelings, haunted by the ghost of an innocent man and feeling awful as a finger-pointing rat, give the sensation that Sancho is a rich contradictory character to be developed. However, the story is pointless, showing a hopeless society in a city dominated by gangs, lost youth and corrupt police force, but without any message in the end. I had never expected the redemption of any character, but I found the unpleasant plot a caricature and very manipulative view of the LAPD. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Dirty – O Poder da Corrupção" ("Dirty – The Power of the Corruption")

Dirty is another cop movie about crooked cops, and there are many similarities between Training Day and Dirty, but I enjoyed Dirty more than Training Day. The Directing by Chris Fisher is much more Stylish then Antoine Fuqua's vision and also I thought the acting by Clifton Colins Jr. and Cuba were very good, i do believe Collins was a bit better because his character was not the same as Ethan Hawkes character in Training Day but Cuba's character in this film was almost Idenitical to Denzel's character. Also i enjoyed the somewhat complicated story in this film rather then Training Day's straight forward story. If you were to forget about seeing Traing Day and just watch this film as i did, i believe that you would enjoy this film more than Training Day. I recommend this film to anyone that likes cop movies and to people who don't have sensitive ears due to the hundreds of F words in the film and those who don't mind violence in their movies.

Salim Adel (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) is a LAPD patrol cop. His partner Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins, Jr.) is a former gang member.

Cuba tries his best copy of Denzel in Training Day and it works for a little while. I think Denzel is just on a different level. Cuba seems to fade. He's not able to keep it up. As they follow their dark path, it becomes less and less relevant. I don't care about these characters. I find no rooting interest in either of these characters. In the end, I have little interest in the movie itself. This is only for die-hard Cuba fans.

Some great performances and a good story. The score was really cool, setting the mood throughout the movie and I thought Gooding did a convincing turn as a cop. Inevitably this will be compared to Denzel Washington's performance in Training Day. And although the budget for this film was probably a quarter of Trainign Day's, I think this film is superior. Why? The last 15 minutes in Training Day were a mess and tainted the movie. Here, the performances are on par and there's no ridiculous John Woo-type chase/action scene to end on. Clifton Collins is great and Gooding reminds us what an actor he can be if his agent gives him a halfway-decent script to work with. I recommend.

Dirty will unfortunately draw comparison to Training Day, but if you can get past the similarities of the cover of this book, the content will come back strong and stand alone as a polished original. This movie reminds you that with decisive, deliberate direction, an excellent score and solid performances, a routine storyline can serve as the boilerplate foundation for the more difficult aspects of film-making to shine.

Collins has always been a favorite of mine to watch; almost singlehandedly destroying stereotypes of Latino actors while simultaneously stewing in the shallow pool of roles offered him. His stand out performances in 187 and Tigerland have only been improved in Dirty with his ability to bring humanity and sincerity to his otherwise bland characters. Gooding pulls it off in the end, almost through the sheer pleasure of watching him portray such an off-type character that the "over the top" performance was a necessity to draw your attention away from the believability of his playing the role. It was as if with every screamed expletive he was daring you to not take him seriously.

Dirty is a poster child film for how a director through what would appear to be either deliberate, clever and wise choices for the cast and crew or was very lucky in the outcome. But to this writer that is the magic of film-making. The end result of this film looks like a seamless collaboration of professionals turning out what is an interesting, exciting, visceral portrayal of bad cops and worse cops trying to outplay the system. Luck can only take you so far, and no doubt every component played a part in making this film work. The cinematography keeps the grit and grime of the streets in full focus, and the action and sometimes brutal violence is always just around the corner to snap your attention back into place as the plot moves forward.

To compare this movie to any other is doing it a disservice. Dirty takes any preconceived lemons it clearly had as a disadvantage going in, and made lemonade worth a second glass. Try it, you won't be disappointed.

7/10 - Maddis