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Dark Blue

By John Anderson | STAFF WRITER

February 21, 2003

(R). On the eve of the Rodney King acquittals in 1992, corruption within the Los Angeles police force breaks down the fabric of both the department and the city. Gritty, gripping, a bit uneven, but Kurt Russell hits all the right notes. With Scott Speedman, Brendan Gleeson, Ving Rhames, Michael Michele, Lolita Davidovich. Screenplay by David Ayer from a story by James Ellroy. Directed by Ron Shelton. 1:56 (violence, vulgarity, nudity).

After a literal lifetime of acting, Kurt Russell is still an underrated dramatic resource: The man can carry a film like few others. But with apologies to Mae West, "Dark Blue" proves the same thing about Russell that can be said about a handful of American leading men, including Richard Gere, Alec Baldwin and even Clint Eastwood: When he's good, he's very, very good. But when he's bad, he's better.

And not since his reprise of the immortal Snake Plissken in "Escape from L.A." (1996) has Russell had as juicy a villain as Eldon Perry, a racist, evidence-planting, leg-breaking Los Angeles police detective whose dirty urban world is his filthy degenerate oyster. Snake, in fact, was far too cartoonish to compete with the likes of Perry, who arrives saddled with several generations of hard-knuckle cops lurking in his genetic background and a complex confusion of moral cowardice and physical menace.

Unfortunately for the film and for us, Perry engages in moral self-improvement over its course, leading to a rather predictable kind of character redemption. But for the first half, he's delightfully irredeemable.

He's also eminently believable. Opening with the video of Rodney King's arrest and beating in 1991, "Dark Blue" picks up a year later, five days before a suburban jury would let his four assailants walk and spark days of deadly rioting.

Making the not-so-elusive connection between entrenched corruption in the LAPD and the rage that followed the King acquittals, "Dark Blue" - bearing co-writer James Ellroy's trademark combination of resigned cynicism and moral umbrage - focuses on a kind of criminal elite within a larger, cancerous department.

Besides Perry, there's his partner, Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), who's about to be cleared on a questionable shooting. There's Bobby's uncle, Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson), the department's capo of corruption. And there's the gang's bête noire, assistant police chief Holland (Ving Rhames), who's fed up with the state of the force and sets out to bring in the whole ugly bunch.

Is "Dark Blue" too ugly? Perhaps. The King case is certainly something we'd prefer not to revisit at all. The movie portrays Perry and Co. as symptoms of a diseased system (not a radical proposition), but it depicts the riots - which we've known are coming since the opening credits - as a kind of moral purgative for systemic illness. And that's certainly a miscarriage of poetic license.

Still, "Dark Blue" has a certain nasty realism to it - which is something of a surprise, coming as it does from Ron Shelton, a director known far better for his sports-oriented movies ("Bull Durham," "Cobb," "Tin Cup" "White Men Can't Jump") than for police procedurals or urban thrillers.

He does lose his way upon occasion. A kind of extended blind date between Bobby and Holland's subordinate, Beth (Michael Michele) has a problem with chemistry: There isn't any.

Nor is Perry's own domestic meltdown very interesting, despite the fact that his long-suffering wife is played by Lolita Davidovich, and audiences hardly get to see enough of her. Even Rhames is a bit overly noble, his Holland making speeches in church and railing against the bad guys in rather standard form.

But the problem may simply be that Russell is so dominant a force of dubious morality that he eclipses all comers. "Dark Blue" wouldn't have been half as dark without him.