All right, which one of you punks threw that videotape of Escape from L.A. at my window? Dark Blue Rated R 118 minutes

Thursday, February 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Full Metal Critic: Dark Blue portrays down-and-dirty policing

We've come a long way from the days of television shows such as "Adam-12," "Dragnet" and "The FBI," and movies like The FBI Story, in which law enforcers were portrayed as tough-but-caring white men who embodied the motto emblazoned on the side of every LAPD radio car: "To protect and to serve."

Now we have "NYPD Blue," in which the dedicated detectives in the fictional 15th Precinct are not above administering a well-deserved tuning up to certain suspects. We have "The Shield," in which detectives aren't above even murder. And we have films like Training Day, where narcotics squad sergeant Denzel Washington advises a young Ethan Hawke , "to catch a wolf, you have to be a wolf."

The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle, between Jack Webb's hagiographic Sgt. Joe Friday and Washington's murdering Alonzo Harris. But with scandals from the L.A.P.D.'s Rampart division to the Abner Louima case in New York City, we suspect it's probably closer to Denzel than Jack.

So if it's a balanced and realistic portrayal of police you're looking for, stick with "Cops." If you want a great movie about corrupt officers, then Dark Blue is your ticket.

Set against the backdrop of the Rodney King riots, Dark Blue follows the exploits of a dirty squad of officers in the Special Investigations Section, a hotshot unit charged with locating and watching known criminals and helping other units as needed.

We start with Sgt. Eldon Perry Jr. (Kurt Russell) and his new trainee, Detective Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman). They are before a board of review, lying about a shooting with some real-life overtones. (They followed a suspect, knowing the guy was armed, but didn't move in until his life was in jeopardy. In real life, the SIS has been accused of doing the same thing.)

Although Assistant Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) is skeptical, Perry and Keough skate. And that's good news for Jack Van Meter, the commander of SIS, who, it turns out, is using the squad as his personal death squad.

What neither Perry nor Keough knows is that Van Meter has two "informants" out knocking over stores to get the cash in their safes, and he's using the proceeds to finance a lavish lifestyle. (How this escapes the notice of the Internal Affairs Division or, more realistically, the Internal Revenue Service, is left unexplained.)

But Holland, who knows the SIS squad is dirty and who wants to be the department's first black chief (recall that actually happened in the wake of the King riots), decides he's going to investigate Van Meter and his squad. He enlists the aid of Sgt. Beth Williamson (Michael Michele), a former lover who is now sleeping with Keough.

The center of Dark Blue, however, is Russell. His character has lived so long with the notion that one must break the law in order to enforce it that it takes a series of truly traumatic events to make him see that he's become exactly like the criminals he's chasing. In a confessional scene, he tells of all manner of abuse--even murder--of suspects, then shrugs and says, "You gotta be heartless in my line of work." The audience laughs nervously.

But the point is that Russell, for all his bravado and for all the terrible things he's done on the job, still has a heart. And the slow, careful way he reveals it makes Dark Blue worth the price of admission alone.

We don't question too much of the reality behind Dark Blue, which perhaps is tragic, since we know police have killed suspects, framed suspects and beaten subjects in the City of Angels. What we do question, perhaps tragically, is whether Russell's remorse is the real fiction.