Dennis Hopper's first chance to direct in almost a decade -- and the fact that it deviates so little from the center of the road can perhaps be taken to mean he would like not to have to wait another decade to direct again. The veteran-cop-rookie-cop partnership (Robert Duvall, Sean Penn) contains some predictable tensions and resolutions, carried out all the way to the ritualistic passing of the baton (or more specifically, of the joke about the two bulls and the herd of cows) that harks back to the male-camaraderie traditions of Howard Hawks's Dawn Patrol. But Hopper is no traditional storyteller, even when given (or taking) a traditional story to tell. Though the frame of action is a single murder investigation, it is easy to lose track of this until very near the end. And the string of incidents in the meantime, really just encounters with this youth gang or that youth gang, show off the director's knowingness -- and "show off" is quite the right verb -- much more than his narrative skills (if any). This is perhaps Hopper's strongest affirmation of his outsider status: leading us into alien territory, gathering around himself actual gang members to ensure that it looks right, and tampering with the spectacle as little as possible. The gritty imagery (by Haskell Wexler, whose presence brings with it an automatic stamp of integrity) has a candid-camera immediacy and accidentality, with something of the quality of urban photographic guerrillas like Helen Levitt, Danny Lyon, Bruce Davidson. Always highly watchable, the movie is a sort of unsolicited installment of Wambaugh's Police Story, with less heart but more of an eye. And, what with one thing instead of the other, about the same largeness of hatsize. With Maria Conchita Alonso. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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