This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

As far as stories about crooked cops go, this is one of the best I've ever seen. A dark, violent thriller set to the backdrop of the race riots in L.A. after the Rodney King verdict, written by David Ayer. Kurt Russell gives the performance of a lifetime and should at least have been nominated for an Oscar. Great and terribly underrated film. 8 stars out of 10.In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:imdb.com/list/ls070242495

It's 1992 as L.A. awaits the verdict of the Rodney King trial. Special Investigations Squad (SIS) rookie Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman) is being questioned about an shooting incident. His partner is the rough and tumble veteran detective Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell). Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson) runs the SIS. Assistant Chief Holland (Ving Rhames) opposes the rough tactics and vows to get Eldon and Bobby. He is assisted by Beth Williamson (Michael Michele) who is sleeping with Bobby without knowing each other's identity. Eldon is getting promoted and has a brassy wife Sally (Lolita Davidovich). Jack is corrupted covering for a couple of gunmen Darryl Orchard (Kurupt) and Gary Sidwell (Dash Mihok) whose shooting Bobby and Eldon are investigating.It's the standard corrupt cop crime drama with lots of tough talk from Kurt Russell. Scott Speedman is playing the naive rookie. There are a few other good actors as well. The case is laid right out without much mystery. It's all testosterone. It's a lot of yelling. It's nothing special. The acting is reasonable but this is all pulpy without any realism. It's fine but it's not anything award worthy. It tries to incorporate the L.A. riots which is a mistake. It could never be big enough to be compelling or real enough to be scary. Making a movie about the riots would be much better. Also Kurt Russell's final speech goes on a little too long. It probably needs to be cut in half.

I have always been a big Kurt Russell fan. He plays anti-heroes, bumbling superheroes, and the everyman character to perfection. Yet, until Dark Blue, I never saw him as a serious dramatic actor who could contend for say, an Oscar. Now granted, Kurt didn't get nominated for his turn as a corrupt L.A.P.D. cop in the movie I'm writing this review on. But he should have. His performance has many more layers than what we're used to seeing from a once famed, child actor. What can I say, as Sergeant Eldon Perry, he is flat out volcanic. Watching him on screen, you feel as if he's acting for his life. I was blown away. Not only is this his best performance ever, but the film outside of Russell, is fantastic as well. Its director Ron Shelton (White Man Can't Jump, Tin Cup), is not known for shooting cop flicks. He's more your lessons- learned-through-sports movie guy. He does however, in this exercise, know the darkest parts of L.A., and he knows how to get his actors to say what they mean and mean what they say. Let's be honest, going into the theater back in 2003, I didn't think a guy who played Elvis and a director who made Bull Durham could deliver a gritty, absorbing, and overwhelmingly solid cop thriller. I have to admit I was mistaken and pleasantly surprised at the same time.Now Dark Blue does come off as a little confusing in the first 10-15 minutes. It then however, settles down to tell its story in a brilliant sort of way that an audience member can not think too hard and be massively entertained at the same time. Based on a short story by crime novelist James Ellroy concerning the famous Rodney King trial and serving as a backdrop to the L.A. riots of 1992, "Blue" makes its case as a character study for Russell, his superior officer (commander Jack Van Meter played Brendan Gleeson who specializes in cold, heartless types), and his nervous young partner (detective Bobby Keough played by Underworld's Scott Speedman). Russell's character and Speedman's character take orders from Van Meter who on the side, has two street thugs regularly steal safes and murder for him (the murders aren't the main intention, it's about the money). In return, he lets them stay out of jail therefore putting the burden of having said detectives (Keough and Perry) find, shoot, and arrest similar suspects who had nothing to do with the crimes. As the film carries on, Perry (Russell) along with Keough (Speedman) have epiphanies and start to question their overall motives. Meanwhile, assistant chief Arthur Holland (played by a powerfully gentle Ving Rhames) is trying to crack the whole internal investigation wide open and expose any corrupt doings within the department.This is a smooth, intricately woven plot machine. As I viewed it for a second time, I was heavily reminded of 2001's Training Day. Both films are similar in their examination of the misguided, fallen nature of L.A.'s finest. In terms of the lead, Russell plays a sort of less nastier version of Denzel Washington's Alonzo Harris. Even the endings of these films seem sort of familiar. Both actors in each movie spout off soliloquies and speeches when their vehicles reach their conclusions. The difference with Dark Blue is that it's a lot less bloody and it deals more with moral issues minus the over-the-top gratuitous violence (just call it Training Day lite). Yes, Training Day is also very good. But "Blue" goes deeper and exhausts you as the viewer, in different, more thought-provoking ways.One of my favorite things I like to do as a critic, is find motion pictures that are vastly underrated and painfully overlooked by other critics and the movie going public. Dark Blue may be one of the most underrated films I have ever seen. It came out at the wrong time of the year (March of 2003 in the U.S.), wasn't marketed terribly well, and as a result, tanked at the box office. The fact that it hasn't grown a mild cult following also has me scratching my head. Bottom line: If you haven't seen this masterpiece, please do so. It makes you question how police work gets done, it forecasts a harrowing sense of dread from the opening scene re-shown and hour and a half later, it has sequences in which Ron Shelton puts you right in the middle of L.A.'s terrifying South Central mind field, and it has Russell plowing his way through "Blue" like a bull in a china shop. All in all, Dark Blue is a gem, a revelation and one "dark" film indeed.

Dark Blue is directed by Ron Shelton and written by David Ayer from a story by James Ellroy. It stars Kurt Russell, Scott Speedman, Michael Michele, Brendan Gleeson and Ving Rhames. Story is set in the run up to the Rodney King ignited riots in Los Angeles. LAPD officer Eldon Perry (Russell) is as tough as they come, he believes that it's OK to bend the rules if it means putting a bad guy away. But bending rules leaves a trail, a trail that leads to more corrupt cops than himself. So as he and his fresh faced partner Bobby Keough (Speedman) continue to come under intense suspicion from Assistant Chief Arthur Holland (Rhames), Perry's life is suddenly at risk; just as the city is about to explode.It's been said many times before, so I'll get it out of the way now. Dark Blue is very similar to Training Day (2001), the dirty cop based movie that bagged Denzel Washington another Oscar. What is forgotten or not known, is that Dark Blue was shot before Training Day. Written by the same writer, Ayer, Dark Blue sat on the shelf for nearly three years at studio HQ whilst the suits wondered what to do with the film. Of course, dirty cop film's have been many over the years, but both this and Denzel's movie are from the upper echelon's of the crime sub-genre, it wouldn't have hurt to have had two similar film's out in a short space of time, how many times have we seen it happen before? What it amounts to in the grand scheme of things for Dark Blue, is that it's unfairly seen as the inferior copy of Training Day. Wrong, because Dark Blue is the better movie.Opening with the infamous camcorder footage of white coppers beating the tar out of motorist Rodney King, Dark Blue sets a gritty tone from the off. From here we find our characters thrust into a city on the edge of chaos, chaos fuelled by the lead character of the piece. The link between Eldon Perry and the impending riots is key, Perry might not have been one of the actual coppers who lay down that beating on King, but it's his actions, and how he enforces the law, that forms the basis of badness that is inherent in this particular police force. The smart thing here in Ayer and Ellroy's story is that Perry is not a loose cannon egotist, he's a measured third generation cop, following in family footsteps and adhering to management policy above him. His family life is also very revealing, the makers including this arc in the film proves to be a very good move.Along side him is young Bobby, desperate to get on and be a name in the force, he's troubled greatly by Perry's (and his superiors) way of doing things. But is this the way it should be? Bad guys are bad guys, right? It's a neat vein in the narrative thread, one cop who presumes he's right in his actions, the other who hopes that his partner is right in his actions. Pitted against them is the restrained Assistant Chief Arthur Holland, driven by good, but tainted by a past indiscretion, he casts an imposing shadow over the corruption he knows exists around him. They are all well drawn characters, and with a punchy script at work, there's an air of authenticity about the movie. It may be treading a well worn genre path in basis, but it rises above most others because it doesn't soft soap its subject.That it works so well is primarily down to a towering performance from Russell. Playing Perry as fearsome and loathsome, Russell doesn't call for any sympathy: that is until he's asked to by the nature of the story. It's only after the film has finished that you realise he's given a three tiered turn, each one as believable as it is magnetic. Unfortunately Speedman is just too wet, underplaying it too much alongside Russell to the point that when he's called on for some dramatic thrust it comes off as second rate. Rhames is wonderfully sedate, while Gleeson (as always) holds his scenes with an assuredness, a presence, that few newer actors can match. Kudos, too, to Lolita Davidovich as Perry's wife, Sally. In a film that's thriving on machoness and violence, Davidovich brings a tenderness to her scenes with Russell, and it never once feels out of place.With a stronger story than Training Day, and arguably a better lead performance, Dark Blue deserves more respect and a bigger audience. It has the odd problem, such as the afore mentioned Speedman and the inevitable contrivances entering the home straight, but this is a tough nitty gritty thriller that's recommended with confidence to adult cinema fans. 8/10