Dirty

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.

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

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.

This is your standard cop drama crap that you can see better done on various television shows about cops. There's no new territory covered here or any new story involved. This is about two partners on the anti-gang unit. Cuba Gooding's character is more comfortable being dirty than his latino partner, who has visions that are representative of his guilt. We come on the scene as Clifton Colinns' character is well on his way to blowing in the entire department to Internal Affairs out of some misguided sense of guilt. This cop is an idiot and makes a number of dense-headed decisions in this movie that lead to a world of sh#4t.

THe plot is mainly watching the deconstruction and demise of our main characters as they continually make the wrong move and get themselves deeper into the gangster infested sh#4t.

A few too many scenes were borrowed from a far superior movie- Training Day.

This is watchable, and forgettable. It's nothing new.