A barely passable cop morality tale. But still passable.
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02/20/06
Dirty (2005)
22
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:27
Fresh:6
Rotten:21
Average Rating:4.1/10
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: In a city ravaged by violent crime, the police department's anti-gang task force uses any means at its disposal to get the bad guys off the streets, with cops often acting as judge, jury and... [More]
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Clifton Collins, Brittany Daniel, Keith David
Director: Chris Fisher
Reviews for Dirty
It makes Training Day seem like a film about good citizenship, but Dirty is also a luxury vehicle for two actors whose every appearance on screen is a boon.
02/23/06
Dirty is a solid ride, and deserves recognition if only because it affords Gooding the chance to reaffirm his acting chops.
03/01/07
A no-nonsense dramatic response to the LAPD Rampart scandals of the '90s.
07/22/08
Top CriticLike the best pulp, though, it gets its hooks into you faster than you can start to wonder why you should possibly care about what happens to any of its despicable characters, and, before you know it, you’ve been pulled deep into its Dantean vision.
02/23/06
The cinematography of Eliot Rockett is also laudable: The city is not only rendered in the usual hot and gritty texture of urban landscapes, but is imbued with sense of oppression that is palpable.
02/24/06
The intentions are sincere, but you'll want to take a good shower after sitting through this mess.
02/24/06
[Director Fisher] appears fixated on Los Angeles as a nihilistic phantasmagoria.
02/21/06
As the villain, Wyclef Jean exercises an impression-as-accent of John Malkovich’s character from Rounders in turn impersonating a member of the Jamaican bobsled team.
02/24/06
Capturing LA as a sepia-toned, sunbaked wasteland just isn't fresh. Why must every LA cop drama take place on the hottest day of the year just as the city is about to explode?
02/24/06
...although Dirty isn't much better than some of his earlier efforts, one can't help but admire Gooding Jr's willingness to portray such an irredeemably nasty character.
04/01/06
Chris Fisher's Dirty is clumsier and less earnest than Crash, but it's every bit as totalitarian.
02/17/06
DIRTY boasts about a wayward police drama that needs considerable conscientious washing. Sadly, this perfunctory scrub job simply attacks the same old neglected stained areas.
02/26/06
While I have no doubt that real corrupt cops use language like this, it sounds like these actors don't actually know what the words mean. They sound like eighth graders... like Anthony Anderson and Taye Diggs in Malibu's Most Wanted pretending not
02/23/06
The machinations of the plot are so murky as to be not worth following.
02/24/06
Not entirely successful, but it's as twisted as a James Ellroy novel, and it may please genre fans who don't require the transubstantiation of spilled blood into the holy water of redemption.
01/20/06
This picture of it is poppin' blanks at too many turns to be considered honest nor a reflection of the real deal.
08/26/06
As good as the leads and the supporting cast are, and as much action as gets packed into the film's relatively brief running time, none of it draws us in dramatically.
02/24/06
Top CriticAt the end of the antiheroes' ropes, at the end of writer-director Chris Fisher's genre exercise, guns have been drawn, blood has been spilled, cops have been thwarted from going straight, and nothing has changed.
02/22/06
The only suspense is how long it's going to take for this movie to finally drag to an end.
02/24/06
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