Dark Blue

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Dark Blue is one of those totally happy surprises that moves so quickly and curves so sharply that it leaves this era's hyped critical hits looking like beached whales.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Goes where all too few films dare to venture these days -- into the heart of moral darkness.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of "Training Day" and "Narc." Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Flaws and all, Dark Blue has a combustible energy that's usually anathema to Hollywood, reopening an old wound that has festered too quietly for more than a decade.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Shelton's harrowing and compulsively watchable morality play.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A film of wounding power. It stays with you.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Russell is the reason to go to the theater. He will continue to hold your attention when things around him -– like the storyline -– lose steam and credibility.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

While Dark Blue may not be easy to watch, it's exceptionally well made.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Not a great movie, but it has moments that go off the meter and find visceral impact. The characters driving through the riot-torn streets of Los Angeles provide some of them, and the savage, self-hating irony of Russell's late dialogue provides the rest.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It gains a major charge of dramatic energy from Kurt Russell's ferocious acting, almost certainly the best of his career.

Slate David Edelstein

This is ultimately a conversion melodrama, and a clumsy one. But until it goes to hell, it's thrillingly good, a fervid answer to the spate of cop movies that glorify brutality and sanction ends over means.

Variety David Rooney

Refreshingly devoid of flashiness or artificially pumped-up action, this consistently gripping, well-constructed police thriller… showcases a tightly controlled performance from Kurt Russell.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Eleven years on, someone in Hollywood has finally worked up the nerve to address the LA riots--but only on the slickest terms imaginable.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Powerful, uneven police drama.

USA Today Mike Clark

There's at least one plot element too many here; let your own taste determine which one. Yet until it dissolves into conventional melodrama during a climactic fracas, this fast-paced story is never less than watchable.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Unlike the intrigue and winding switchback of moral mysteries that defined "L.A. Confidential," Dark Blue travels on flat, predictable terrain.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

After a decade of silence, surely Hollywood can do better.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

In the end, the problem with movies like Dark Blue is that they willfully ignore the systemic, historical, cultural, and class causes of racism in favor of pinning it all on a few bad apples. Sure, that's entertainment. It's also a lie.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Ron Shelton effectively ratchets up the tension without resorting to the stylistic flourishes of a more recent flick about dirty cops, "Narc."

TV Guide Ken Fox

If this brutal tale of crime and corruption within the upper ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department feels like an updated retelling of "L.A. Confidential," there's good reason. Both stories spring from the dark mind of American crime writer James Ellroy.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie ends not with a bang but a wimp.

Film Threat David Grove

It’s shocking how much Dark Blue hates cops.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Sensitively directed by Ron Shelton and helped by what just might be the best performance of Kurt Russell's career, Dark Blue is as interesting and successful as it can be within its limits, but those limits make this a more generic film than its makers intended.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Shelton has directed Dark Blue in a jacked-up urban thriller style that simply does not play to his gifts. He's a sidewinder, the sort of writer-director who tells his stories through loopy character details and anecdotes.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie does not live up to Mr. Russell's performance.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

So what will happen? Sadly, some overacting and a bad "And Justice For All"-style speech at the end.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Through it all, though, Kurt Russell gives Dark Blue a bleak integrity -- funny word, given the circumstances -- that almost serves as its redemption.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

However misjudged and evidently cobbled together in the editing room, Dark Blue does have the nerve to drive right through the riots with Russell's saber-toothed bigot, implicitly linking the two phenomena and not being shy about the suffering on either side of the combat.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

In the wake of TV's powerhouse "The Shield," Dark Blue comes off as something of a retread, with little of "The Shield's" electric fury, edgy camera work or deft characterizations.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

In short, Dark Blue suffers from a problem that, however niggling, is likely to hobble any thriller: no thrills. [17 & 24 February 2003, p.204]

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

My own view is that, like me, the LAPD was defeated by the movie's incestuously proliferating plots. I've seen Dark Blue twice, and I still don't have a handle on all its comings and goings.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Ultimately, Dark Blue feels roughly a decade too late with its back story of the Los Angeles riots. Gates’ department had its share of dirty blues, to be sure, but that hasn’t been notable since the smoke cleared back in 1992.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

We have heard this song before, know it by heart (sadly, as film still can't keep pace with real-life headlines about fake drug busts and a shady LAPD), and still filmmakers can't resist its rhythms.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Creates a hellishly evil portrait of a police department in which every white cop is either a racist thug or an enabler, and every black cop a disgusted observer or crusading hero.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Dark Blue proves again what a remarkable actor Denzel Washington is. Too bad he's not in it.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The movie heads in a disastrous direction: namely, a police academy ceremony... This lets-wrap-this-thing-up moment sucks the life and the honesty out of an otherwise compelling portrait of tainted lawmen, tainted law.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Imagine finding the will to get up every morning to do another day's work on this stale story tarted up with relevance.