Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 15 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 8 Ratings

  • Starring: Robert Duvall, Sean Penn
  • Summary: Set in the East L.A. barrio, Colors stars Sean Penn and Robert Duvall as very different cops, both in age and temperment, hand picked for the city's anti-gang campaign. As partners, they daily drive their unmarked car through the warring Los Angeles neighborhoods. Their simple code of endurance: Keep peace in the streets at any price! [MGM] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 15
  2. Negative: 1 out of 15
  1. Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
    90
    A solidly crafted depiction of some current big-city horrors and succeeds largely because of the Robert Duvall-Sean Penn teaming as frontline cops.
  2. It's an exhilarating sparring match between Duvall's workmanlike fine-tuning and Penn's raw energy. [15 Apr 1988]
  3. Reviewed by: Hal Hinson
    60
    The movie lacks a sure sense of purpose and direction, and, watching it, you can't help but feel that Hopper, by stepping back and refusing to assert his own point of view, has on some essential level abdicated his responsibility as a director. [15 Apr 1988]
  4. Without complexity to its characters, with little balance and without a hint of the personal, family or community issues involved, Colors becomes a movie that never has to ask "Why?"--a vivid, noisy shell of a film filled with eager young actors rattling along on the surface of a lethally important subject. [15 Apr 1988]

See all 15 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1

Trailers