irector Ron Shelton, best known for directing less pithy stuff like Bull Durham and White Men Can't Jump, uses Dark Blue to take on the increasingly popular theme of bad cops, this time hanging a story - James Ellroy's - on a skeleton of real LA events. The film opens with gritty footage of a car chase and the subsequent horror of watching a surrendered man beaten and kicked like a sack of shit. The man is Rodney King, and the cops are LAPD, and maybe, the movie supposes, the officers were just doing what it is they do. The film, set eleven years ago in Los Angeles, days before the King verdict is decided, puts police abuse of power and LA racism in its crosshairs.


Wet-behind-the-ears officer Bobby Keough (played by Scott Speedman, Felicity's object of affection), is questioned for the shooting of a man in a back-alley takedown. The shooting is his first, and he's terrified he'll be suspended for the act. Keough has nothing to worry about, however, as his fat and sassy uncle Jack Van Meter (Brendon Gleeson) is on the board with a bunch of other white guys, all of whom vote that his action was "in policy". The only vote against Keough's action is from hard-ass Deputy Police Chief Arthur Holland (played by solemn-tempered Ving Rhames), who just happens to be black, and just happens to think - through his black intuition? - that the shooting didn't happen exactly as Keough said it did.


Enter hero Kurt Russell, suited so poorly to almost any role that wants to be taken seriously, but in this case somewhat well-matched to the disheveled, loose cannon of a cop that is Eldon Perry. Perry is a troubled man, trapped in the shadow of trying to please his racist, trigger-happy dead father (who was partners with Van Meter). Perry's a lousy dad and a selfish, oblivious husband, who is married to the LAPD first and to his wife second. He's essentially a surrogate father to young Keough, attempting to show him the real stuff of police work in the only way he knows how - by helping him shoot a guy. Perry confesses angrily to his wife that Keough never even pulled the trigger that day -that in fact he'd dropped his gun, and Perry had picked it up and fired it for him, to give the kid an "initiation" of sorts.


This kind of fudging of the means to an end is the devil on Dark Blue's shoulder. The movie suggests that from time to time, maybe, just maybe, sometimes it's okay to get the guy in the wrong way, so long as he was a bad guy to begin with. That maybe police policy makes allowances for this, in certain circumstances, and maybe sometimes you have justifiable cause to treat someone like a sack of shit, if you're pretty sure they're one anyway. Rodney King's example is woven throughout the story - but by the end of the film it seems like almost everyone is the bad guy.


With the shooting committee done, young Keough is eager to make a reputation for himself as a strong, tough cop, and how better do this than under the bullying tutelage of Perry? Perry and Keough are soon given their next assignment - and Keough's first test of LAPD loyalty - as they are asked by Van Meter to find a couple of thugs to pin a liquor store massacre on. Seasoned Perry quickly guesses that the real assailants in the grisly crime were Van Meter's pet informants Orchard and Sidwell, a mixed-race crime duo whose talents Van Meter has secretly been using to do a little pocket-fattening for himself. Though Perry knows better than to question Dad's partner, he hates criminals even more than he hates everything else, and suggests to Van Meter that the real perps should go down for this. Van Meter throws a temper tantrum and reminds Perry to "do what you do," which apparently in the LAPD's case is falsify information and persecute the innocent.


Keough, naively confused about what they're being asked to do, suggests to his partner that maybe it's a little bit wrong to pin the crime on people they know didn't do it, and Perry unleashes his own temper tantrum on his protégé. "You've got crime and you've got criminals," Perry tells him. All they're paid to do is match 'em up - even if it ain't exactly correctly.


Meanwhile, the humorless Deputy Chief Holland is on Van Meter's case, having threatened that he would "get into some nigga shit" with him. To this end, Holland has enlisted the aid of his handsome young assistant, Sargeant Beth Williamson (Michael Michele) to get the proof on the recent shooting inquiry - he's sure Van Meter is covering something up- protecting his own. To Williamson's surprise, the man pictured in the file for Bobby Keough is the man she's been sleeping with for two weeks - she'd known he was a cop too, but insisted on not exchanging last names, presumably to avoid situations like the one she's just landed in.


Meanwhile, Perry and Keough have fingered two ex-cons with nasty records to be the fall guys for the liquor store job. In an absolutely unnecessary takedown involving the SWAT team, Keough manages to shoot one of the "bad guys" and is haunted by the unnecessary killing. He begins to crack under the pressure, and runs to Williamson to purge his sins.


Wracked by guilt and suddenly, unconvincingly swayed to the side of good, Keough dons a rifle and his girlfriend and heads to the home of the informant thugs, Orchard and Sidwell, to exact overdue justice, just as we learn the LAPD cops in the Rodney King trial have been found not guilty. Inexplicably, the nervous Van Meter has already set the thugs up to kill Perry, who he's dispatched to their shack in South Central. Unravelling all too much like a Three's Company episode, the three cops arrive at the same time, tragedy ensues, and in the most shocking of developments, the innocent soul of Keough is traded for bitter Perry's last chance at redemption.


As this senseless conflict unfolds, the LA riots are in their nascent stages, growing in increasing dusty yellow horror as Perry careens through the streets with an LAPD-sized chip of guilt on his shoulder, determined to catch Orchard and Sidwell even if it means getting killed in the process. Chasing them down, which should have been impossible, Perry watches in detached interest as Sidwell, the white member of the duo, is dragged out of his car and beaten senseless by rioting blacks.


The parallel - black rioters turning on a white guy in their neighbourhood while letting his black partner run free, compared to white cops turning on black people while protecting each others' sins - is weak, and rather than suggest that racism may be cause and effect, implies instead that it is endemic, a genetic trap, like Perry's own struggle with his father's legacy.


While skilled at casting aspersions, Dark Blue does little to clean up after itself. The transformations of both Perry and Keough from approval-seeking corrupt cops to righteous fellows are loosely stretched. Perry's own self-esteem issues are hinted at but not developed (he only motivates himself to do anything useful when yelled at by a woman). And overall, the toughness of Rhames and Michele's performances are overshadowed by the ineffectuality of both Speedman and Russell's characters. Ellroy and screenwriter David Ayer, seemingly stuck in a film noir tough guy fantasy, bog the script down with too many pat one-liners and too-good-to-be-true coincidences. Dark Blue makes a strong statement about all sins being equal, but its attempt to play traditional LA crime drama tropes against modern, Training Day-esque posturing falls short.