Also this issue:

Lost and Found
A documentary about Terry Gilliam's failure spells success for its creators -- and maybe for Gilliam as well.
-Sam Adams

Get Your War On
How to lose a Civil War cinephile in 210 minutes.
-Ryan Godfrey

Screen Picks
-Sam Adams

February 20-26, 2003

movies

Cops and Bobbles

Blueâs clues: Kurt Russell and Ving Rhames go head

to head in <i>Dark Blue</i>.

Blueâs clues: Kurt Russell and Ving Rhames go head to head in Dark Blue.

Dark Blue drops the ball.

by Cindy Fuchs

Set in 1992 Los Angeles, Dark Blue resurrects the Rodney King beating trial as an ominous backdrop for the film's focus on a team of corrupt, self-righteous cops. But by the time the verdicts come down and the streets erupt in violence, the movie has devolved into conventional action melodrama, complete with bad white cops' sacrifice, redemption and just punishment.

Oh yes, the film features two black cops -- noble Deputy Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) and efficient Sergeant Beth Williamson (Michael Michele) -- as well as a couple of predictably excessive black thugs (well played by Kurupt and Master P). But the painfully named Dark Blue is all about white guys, either presuming privilege or suffering guilt. And that means that the issues surrounding "Rodney King" (the events and media coverage, more than the man), like poverty, abuse and long-standing institutional racism, are reduced to background noise. If it's not as egregious as Mississippi Burning, it's in the ballpark.

Much like Rampart's infamously shady anti-gang unit, the film's Special Investigations Squad regularly plants evidence, threatens informants, executes suspects and steals from local businesses, justifying its "work" as ridding the city of drug-dealing, violent scum. (The rationale will be familiar to viewers of The Shield.) Adapted by David Ayer (Training Day) from a story by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and directed by Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump), the film comes with the usual concerns -- overweening machismo, loyalty, racism and the love of a good woman.

Top SIS detective Eldon (Kurt Russell) is the muscle, dispatched by his boss, Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson), to clean up messes with whatever force he deems necessary. Even as he descends into alcoholism and becomes increasingly estranged from his wife, Sally (Lolita Davidovich), and adolescent son, Eldon prides himself on being a whiz at his job.

While the whole department worries about the King trial, this dedicated "team player" has his own problems. An internal review board is investigating a shooting by his newbie partner, Bobby (Scott Speedman). Though Bobby, Van Meter's nephew, is less than enthusiastic about the nefarious aspects of the job, he also wants to impress Eldon. So he goes along with illegal activities and hides his affair with Beth to avoid his overtly racist partner's likely reaction.

The plots pile up like dead bodies. Eldon and Bobby are assigned to a multiple homicide at a convenience store (shades of L.A. Confidential), involving a conveniently interracial team (Dash Mihok and Kurupt), working under Van Meter's auspices. He instructs Eldon to pin the murders on two locals with records. Just about then, Bobby has doubts, Sally walks out and Eldon must come to terms with his wide-ranging culpability, all as the uprising begins. Eldon careens through the streets en route to the showdown, and Barry Peterson's cinematography turns alternately poetic and devastating: Looters, assailants and frightened locals rush past his car, menacing, confused or feeling suddenly entitled in ways they'd never imagined possible. It's a stunning sequence, but it only reveals Dark Blue's lost opportunities.