Customer Reviews

Dirty (2005)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Do not be fooled by the description that Amazon gives you. This is not a re-hashing of a Training Day type story. Although it might seem like so in the beginning, the movie leads you down one street, and then takes a VERY sharp turn at the end.
Clifton Collins does a very good job in his first(I think) starring role. If you have seen him in 187, then you should already know that he is a solid young actor. Cuba Gooding does excellent as usual, although his character is quite the disturbing individual. Some of his actions will make you sick if you are used to seeing him as the "good natured, black guy" he usually portrays. Also, rising star Khleo Thomas has a surprising Adult role in here. Do not let your kids see this movie based on that fact that he is in the movie. This is a graphic and sometimes downright nasty movie. But it is good. All around great acting, good story, and, as I said, just when you think you know everything, SLAP!!!!!! Guess again. Very good, relatively unknown movie. Recommended.

I'm sure there's a good film under here somewhere, beneath all the racial epithets, the profanity, the noisy jump cut editing, the convoluted plot, the quasi day-of-the-dead symbolism, and the truly over-the-top performances by the two leads Cuba Gooding Jr. and Clifton Collins Jr. There's a lot of blood spilled, and guns drawn on the violence-laden Los Angeles streets in Dirty, but nothing is ever solved and the City seems to remain a place of hell and damnation.

Dirty is a nasty, gritty, and mean-spirited film, where viewers will have to suspend disbelief at much of what goes on. Part Training Day and part Crash, but with a baroque, music video edge. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Cuba Gooding Jr. makes a desperate leap to the bad side playing Salim Adel so loathsome he makes even the most evil screen character soft and cuddly.

Salim is a bad, bad man - he routinely harasses and humiliates white drivers in fancy cars who have gotten lost, and manually rapes a young Latino teenager with his finger. Reportedly based on the rampart scandal that rocked the LAPD a few years ago, Dirty follows Salim and his loyal Mexican-American partner Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr.) through an especially stressful day.

Sancho, a former gang member, is so haunted by the shooting of an innocent bystander at a crime scene. But Sancho and Salim are now both cops and they're being protected from prosecution by the low-down, rotten Captain Spain (Keith David) along with his shifty lieutenant (Cole Hauser).

When the lieutenant asks the partners to remove a bag of heroin from the evidence room as part of a scheme that could make everybody rich, Adel jumps at the opportunity while Sancho has misgivings. The problem is that with all his macho posturing, Adel isn't that bright, and he fails to see that Captain Spain is setting them up. Spain merely sees them as ex-gang members and murders, and ultimately expendable.

The rest of the plot is rather convoluted, as various gang members are introduced and the two protagonists become involved in turf war between rival drug rings and have to shoot - and shoot, and shoot - their way out. The screenplay is totally over-the-top; it's just an excuse for Salim to hurl racial epithets and talk dirty. The movie to stumbles nervously through the Los Angeles underworld, guns popping to a hip-hop soundtrack, as competing black and Mexican hierarchies in the drug trade go at each other.

The movie is bathed in de-saturated colors, jittery camera swings, nervous flashbacks, and fancy image pushing. This all very clever for the first ten minutes, but rapidly becomes irritating. The biggest problem with Dirty, however, is the misrepresentation of cops. It's just too hard to believe that a character as devilishly nasty of Salim would ever be given a chance to participate in such an operation.

Plus the poor Cuba Gooding is rather preposterous here; though he sports a moustache, tattoos and floridly drops several F- and N-words in virtually every line of dialogue, he just never rises about the surprising mediocrity of the material. It's another nail of the coffin of his tragically rapidly declining career. Mike Leonard April 06.

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, July 06

The strange and baffling career of Cuba Gooding takes another dive in this attempt to mirror the success of Denzel's TRAINING DAY. Unfortunately, Cuba's not Denzel and this movie is way below the quality of DAY. Filled with enough foul language to fill the Pacific Ocean, the movie attempts to be artsy but is merely another bad cop movie, filled with bad cops---where's the good ones? Clifton Collins Jr., so good in CAPOTE, is wasted in the role of the apparently honest partner of Cuba who is going to testify in Internal Affairs regarding the killing of an innocent bystander during a drug bust. All though this Cuba swaggers like a rap star and Collins has to try and act tough with him. There's an unusual twist in the end and a very long russian roulette sequence that do nothing to redeem this disappointing film.

The camera work is nauseating; it has those amateur jerky, close-up facial, then rapid far-away zooming and back to close-up motions popular with kids today. The technical advisors (if any) had no say in maintaining an aura of reality. What cop leaves home dressed in full uniform? When have you seen a cop in uniform with a goatee? When does a Police Captain bow down to a Lieutenant? When does an accused officer get interrogated by Internal Affairs without an attorney? Did they really think a guy with gang tattoos and a supposedly actual gang member would make it on the force, much less on a Gang detail? When have you seen Crip gang members have fun on skateboards or Hells Angels bikers without bikes (who actually look like yuppies) hang out with a cholo who by mere coincidence is in the same gang as the cop who busts him? I was so disgusted with such unreality that I didn't even finish watching the movie. Plus, instead of being original, they borrowed incidents from LAPD's Rampart scandal - gang unit member gets narcotics from Property by checking it out and sells it. This is a waste of talent at best. By all means rent it - see what I mean.

Lol it's like the left over of the movie Training Day. It's not bad but too many similarites of the other movie the 2 cops one badish one with a brain, and so on and so on and so on. It was ok not bad but since I was always thinking about Training day I didn't get to get into it as much. Its a time paster.

Based loosely upon a blend of Training Day and the LAPD's Rampart scandal, two former gangbangers turned police officers - Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Salim Adel (Cuba Gooding Jr.) - are embroiled in an Internal Affairs investigation over a civilian shooting. They must patrol the underworld, sifting through various crimes and competing gangs (primarily Mexican) amidst the drug and turf wars of LA for one last day, sweating the impending IA appointment, the memories of the accidental death, and their varying loyalties to former friends and gang members.

Violence and vulgarity abound, as Cuba does a watered down Denzel impersonation - snarled lip, incessant F-bombs, N-word in every other sentence - while Collins does his best to portray the troubled conscience in a good cop, bad cop relationship. The only problem is, there needs to be a good cop for this to work, which it doesn't, since Sancho is complicit in the evil unleashed by Adel. The performances were fine, but never really pulled me in. Sorry, but Cuba Gooding Jr. is a good guy, and there is nothing his smiling, cherubic face can do about it. Somewhere in there the script finds time to squeeze Cole Hauser in as a generic evil lieutenant; so generic in fact, that he doesn't even have a name. Just "Lieutenant." Appropriately, Hauser mails it in like he's late for another third most important character acting gig (i.e. the norm).

Plenty of gun-play...if that's your thing. There's even a semblance of build-up and character development. Sure, Adel is nasty, and, yes, the police abuse is there, but it just doesn't work. Perhaps it was the shoddy and distracting camera work, the weakest Hell's Angels in film history (worse than the bikers in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure), and the predictability that dissuades?

It's just too much of a Training Day rip-off for my tastes (including the demise of the Denzel doppelganger). Just about the only things missing are the King Kong line and an Eva Mendes nude scene. I suppose it's fitting the two leads are both juniors, because they can't fill the shoes of their older brothers (i.e. Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke). The movie is decent at best, and probably better if Training Day hasn't been seen.

Jason Elin

Who does Cuba think he's fooling? This was terrible. Rent training day instead. This move was Cuba trying to be street or hood. It wasn't. It was terrible and a waste of my time.

When the line between the cops and the drug dealing gangs blurs,
two cops have a fatal encounter with their results of their misdeeds.
One cops kills an innocent old man, the other molests innocent
civilians. They both get caught up in a dirty deal...

As the previous review stated, Cuba attempts to compete with "Training Day" and fails horribly. The plot is lacking, there is poor character development and excessive profanity. I would have given this movie less stars if it were possible. Save your money.