11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is not Training Day, April 5, 2006
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.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
''This is the day, cuz,'', April 30, 2006
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.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
DIRTY is in every way Dirty...until the Zinger Ending!, July 2, 2006
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
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