Dirty

A really strong performance from Clifton Collins Jr, combined with an excellent bad cop come good cop story from Chris Fisher and Gil Reavill with excellent acting from Cuba and Clifton, really great chemistry between them both, really solid acting made this film a knock-out, a really good compliment to films like training day. I would highly recommend this film if you enjoyed training day like me. Some great camera angles with the action scenes contributed towards some great tension and atmosphere, very enjoyable with some great faces like Wyclef Jean, Cole Hauser, Tory Kittles, Khleo Thomas, and Keith David to top it off. Rent it or buy it now! top marks. I hope cuba Forgets films like snowdogs, and continues with films like this and End Game, easily his best film since boyz n the hood.

there was a review quote " If you liked " Traing Day " then you will like this. No, its way past Training Day in violence. Way past anything I've seen in the gritty reality stakes. A bad part of Los Angeles, where the population, it seems to me, is split between predators and prey.... and even the prey are opportunists who will turn to crime when it suits them. Thats the message of this movie. A corner of Tinseltown where civilisation does not exist, where anarchy rules, where the police are the most powerful criminal gang and will do anything to stay there. Everything's corrupt, except possibly the impotent Internal affairs office. Police officer played by Cuba Gooding Jr says to his partner played by Clifton Collins Jr. " Don't you get it ? there ARE no gangs, we've got rid of them all and WE are the only gang left " A good movie, but one that left a strong feeling of foreboding in me, and a realisation that all of us depend on a very thin veneer of civilisation, which, when overstressed can collapse in ruins.

DIRTY seems to be confused as to what it is. The viewer is lead to believe that the LAPD has an undercover anti-gang force made op of ex-gangbangers who know the streets and therefore know how to break the codes that allow gang crimes of drugs and violence to continue unfettered by arrests. Yes, we are all aware of the Rampart scandal that perhaps is the nidus for this story, but what DIRTY shows is a group of despicable, foul mouthed, evil, crime perpetrating opportunists who will do anything to make a hit - all 'protected' by a police force that condones their actions.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a fine actor whose recent roles have not allowed him to demonstrate his craft. Perhaps he wanted a role as a bad guy (in the vein of Denzel Washington, Richard Gere et al who opt for smarmy roles to 'prove' their acting grit!), but he is artificial in this film as a man willing and waiting to do filthy deeds without conscience. He is paired with the also fine actor Clifton Collins, Jr. as the Hispanic equivalent of Gooding's Black bad cop. The story jumps all over the place with so many subplots and characters identifiable only by their total body tattoo differences and hampered by a script that depends on the F word and the N word and M**F** word as a means of communication.

Gooding and Collins are partners and while Gooding seems to be the major offender to decency, Collins does little about it, leading us to believe he is an innocent victim to the Internal Affairs investigation that appears to be the endpoint of this drama. Just when the viewer is saturated by the dirt of this film's techniques and story, the gritty collision of loyalty and redemption enters at the very end, making reflection on the tale that has been assaulting our senses almost embarrassing for the viewer. In the police code, what is permissible, what is wrong, what is justifiable? Fighting crime with crime doesn't seem a viable answer, but we are left asking the question 'What is?' A disturbing film on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that Gooding's agent needs a heads up on finding this gifted actor some worthy roles! Grady Harp

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.

The Ramparts Scandal of the 1990s entailed L.A. gang members infiltrating the police department, violently shaking down fellow gang-bangers, then, in perjured testimony after their stupidity busted wide open the whole mess, ruined the careers of honest cops in L.A.P.D.'s gang units. As final salt in the wound, taxpayers were soaked for millions in court settlements to the put-upon homies that got rough treatment from these hoods in blue.

The real villains of the piece were not-well-thought-through outreach projects to recruit more inner-city youth into the city's police force. This was yet another brainstorm of liberal social engineers far removed from the detritus wrought by their brilliance.

This movie, inspired by Ramparts, takes those facts and corkscrews them 180 degrees. The gangstas are the cops. All cops. The real villain is the SYSTEM, maaaaaaan.

This tired, hackneyed tripe represents the warped mindset of Hollywood's establishment today. It's a weak-tea Frankfurt School indictment of class, race, capital, injustice... (yaaaawn). I think one of the great injustices in this country today that so much of our media, so much of our political arena, is fabricated by these tapas-bar revolutionaries from the mean streets of Malibu, Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Decades ago, "Dirty" would be hailed as wonderfully subversive by reviewers feasting on the bounty of the very system they claim to despise. It's as subversive as "Dancing With the Stars". This is the only political viewpoint we get - in any movie or documentary produced in this country.

In that respect, this movie is similar to "Crash", that other self-celebration of hypocritical Lefty gibberish. In fact, the scene in which Gooding Jr. hassles a middle-class white couple was almost straight-lifted a few years later for "Crash", with the racial components reversed.

One reviewer here proposed "it's easy to behave morally in a sheltered, safe, middle-class environment." Well, it's easier not to become murderous animals in that kind of environment - that's for sure. And, evidently, it's a lot easier to develop a morality far removed from the real world by typing out scripts in tony neighborhoods with gates, guards, income levels in the stratosphere and worldviews in Never-Never Land.