Tale of rogue L.A. cop: A case of deja-'Blue'

Kurt Russell has played cowboys before, but Eldon Perry, his LAPD detective in Dark Blue, is more of a maverick than any six-shooting guy in a Stetson ever was.

A boozing, trigger-happy enforcer with his own take on justice, Perry is a second-generation cop whose ideas about race and crime are warped, and whose loyalties lie not with the public he's sworn to protect but with the police brass who are busy lining their own pockets.

Based on a story by crime novelist James Ellroy (and using a template similar to his neo film noir, L.A. Confidential), Dark Blue takes an oft-told tale - corrupt cops, earnest rookies, deadly intrigue - and plops it down in one of the most incendiary periods of recent Los Angeles history. Over the opening credits of this Ron Shelton-directed drama, footage of the 1991 Rodney King beating by LAPD officers is seen.

The film's story begins a few weeks earlier. It ends on the day of the Los Angeles riots, as news of the not-guilty verdict for the officers - charged with using excessive force in the arrest of the African American motorist - ricochets through the streets.

Perry and his rookie partner (Scott Speedman) have been assigned to investigate a quadruple homicide in a Korean-owned bodega. They're under pressure to put a quick, tidy end to a messy robbery-murder, so they line up a couple of likely candidates to pin the crime on. Problem is, the detectives realize that the real perpetrators are a couple of lowlife informants who happen to be on their boss' payroll.

That boss would be Brendan Gleeson, playing Jack Van Meter, head of the Special Investigations Squad. Like the James Cromwell character in L.A. Confidential, Gleeson is a paternal, magnetic figure who becomes emblematic of a department ruled by brutality and deception.

Dark Blue, which is the first non-sports-themed picture from Shelton (Bull Durham, Tin Cup) in quite a while, has a lot of convincing Training Day-like sequences, with Perry and Speedman's Bobby Keough trolling the boulevards and barrios in their unmarked car. A key subplot that follows a deputy police chief's efforts to bring Perry up on perjury charges - with a grim, swaggering Ving Rhames playing the deputy chief - doesn't quite hang together, especially when it turns out that Rhames' character's assistant (Michael Michele) is having an affair with Perry's partner.

And Lolita Davidovich brings nothing new to the admittedly thankless role of cop's wife: Her Sally Perry is a dispirited, weary soul who says stuff like "There's goulash in the Crock-Pot," when her husband comes home from a busy day of lying under oath or planting evidence or shooting a bunch of people.

While much of the action rings true in Dark Blue, and the events leading up to the riots make for a tense, eerie framework, the movie heads in a disastrous direction: namely, a police academy ceremony full of the kind of bogus speechifying and phony closure that only ever happens in a Hollywood screenwriter's mind. This lets-wrap-this-thing-up moment sucks the life and the honesty out of an otherwise compelling portrait of tainted lawmen, tainted law.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Dark Blue ** 1/2 (Out of four stars)

Produced by Caldecott Chubb, David Blocker, James Jacks and Sean Daniel, directed by Ron Shelton, written by David Ayer, photography by Barry Peterson, music by Terence Blanchard, distributed by United Artists.

Running time: 1 hour, 53 mins.

Eldon Perry. . . Kurt Russell

Bobby Keough. . . Scott Speedman

Jack Van Meter. . . Brendan Gleeson

Holland. . . Ving Rhames

Sally. . . Lolita Davidovich

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, drugs, adult themes)

Playing at: area theaters