Given the pedigree of this movie - savvy director Ron Shelton, original screenplay by James Ellroy ("Plague Season"), and adapted with dialog by David Ayer - it's amazingly flat.

Kurt Russell is one of Nocturne.com's favorite actors. In this movie, he's not bad, his performance as Eldon Perry III is solid, just uninspired. He's a 3rd generation LA cop, working as a clean-up man for an inspector who plays both sides of the street. As with other Ellroy tales, this one revolves around a robbery which quickly gets out of hand. Perry is assigned to take over the liquor store robbery case from the Robbery-Homicide Division as their caseload is too heavy. Perry quickly divines who the perps are, but is told by the good inspector that these guys are hands-off, and to go set up someone else and make sure there's no trial.

Perry's new partner Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), freshly and with much jocularity cleared on a clean shooting, is challenged by Perry. It turns out that the clean shooting was actually executed by Eldon with Bobby's gun after he dropped it when the perp startled him. This assignment then - bagging a framed bad guy in cold blood - is his christening and pennance. He does it, at the same time as his "first names only" lady cop lover is assigned to re-investigate the first shooting. They fight, he confesses, he'll testify for her boss, a politically ambitious deputy chief (Ving Rhames), who's looking to hang Perry's inspector as the rogue cop he is.

This whole convoluted story takes place against the backdrop of Los Angeles awaiting the jury deliberations in the Rodney King trial in Simi Valley. Evidently, Ellroy's original script had the trial at the very end, but Mr. Shelton decided to incorporate this sooner, and throughout the movie; perhaps to add some much needed suspense.

With the exceptions of the perpetrators, played with wonderfully urban glee, the rest of the cast seem to pretty much be doing walk-throughs. There isn't really any meat in the characterizations here. My guess would be that the movie would have greatly benefitted from Mr. Ellroy setting the dialog rather than Mr. Ayer. After all, only Ellroy can "do Ellroy", though Curtin Hanson & Brian Hegeland came close in L.A. Confidential. There just isn't enough desperation, a key component of noir, to carry the "Dark" part of "Blue' here. While we would love to see more movies of this ilk (LAPD Intelligence Squad Noir) we'd like even more to see it done well.

"Listen kid, here's my advice for what it's worth. DEAL WITH IT!"

reviewed by Tim