Search - Dirty (2005) on DVD

Sharon F. (Shar) from AVON PARK, FL
Reviewed on 6/20/2022...

I really enjoyed this movie...maybe because I was in law enforcement for 27 years. It shows that cops are human too. They have prejudices and concerns for safety, just like everyone else does. This shows the human side of every officer.

3 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

''This is the day, cuz,''

M. J Leonard | Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/30/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"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.

"

This is not Training Day

Infinite | Mass | 04/05/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Amateur, unrealsitic, nauseating waste of talent

rexdog21 | California | 04/30/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"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."