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.
Dirty (2005)
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... 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 executioner. As the unit's self-justifying brutality and corruption spiral further out of control, gang member-turned-cop Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr.) begins to question the life he and his partner Salim Adel (Cuba Gooding Jr.) have chosen. So when Internal Affairs agents investigating the division's abuses offer him a deal to come clean about the unit's misdeeds, Sancho must decide whether to heed his conscience or his loyalty to his fellow officers. On the hot, smoggy day Salim and Sancho are scheduled to testify to IA, the two rogue cops agree to run a lucrative, illegal operation for the station's top brass (Keith David and Cole Hauser). As their increasingly bloody mission takes them from one end to the other of the sprawling city they've sworn to protect and serve, Salim and Sancho learn that getting clean isn't nearly as easy as being DIRTY. From writer-director Chris Fisher (Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders, Nightstalker), comes DIRTY, an edgy, suspenseful and action-packed story about a day in the life of two corrupt cops going for one final score. An adrenaline-fueled urban drama set in a decaying American metropolis, DIRTY cuts through the thin blue line between police corruption, gang violence and street justice. --© Silver Nitrate Productions [More]
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Clifton Collins, Brittany Daniel, Keith David
Starring: Cuba Gooding, Clifton Collins, Brittany Daniel, Keith David, Cole Hauser, Wyclef Jean, Tory Kittles, Robert LaSardo, Gates McFadden, Chris Mulkey, Judy Reyes, Khleo Thomas, Brian White, Aimee Garcia, Nicholas Gonzalez, Kevin Grevioux, Wood Harris, Lobo Sebastian
Director: Chris Fisher
Director: Chris Fisher
Reviews for Dirty
Dirty is a solid ride, and deserves recognition if only because it affords Gooding the chance to reaffirm his acting chops.
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.
This picture of it is poppin' blanks at too many turns to be considered honest nor a reflection of the real deal.
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.
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.
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?
Like 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.
Chris Fisher's Dirty is clumsier and less earnest than Crash, but it's every bit as totalitarian.
Another Cuba Gooding Jr. dud. Don't show him the money -- show him the door!
Cuba Gooding Jr. sheds the halo that has threated to strangle his career by playing a corrupt cop in a nasty little genre film set in Los Angeles.
A no-nonsense dramatic response to the LAPD Rampart scandals of the '90s.
The only suspense is how long it's going to take for this movie to finally drag to an end.
The machinations of the plot are so murky as to be not worth following.
Even the stunningly downbeat ending smacks of sub-Tarantinoesque theatrics.
It is so biased that it doesn’t inspire the outrage that Fisher obviously intended.
...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.
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.
We get it. All of you guys watched the Tarantino movies and you watched the Peckinpah movies. Enough, give us something original.
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