Inflammatory cop drama set against a backdrop of the well-documented racism in the LAPD. It begins, indelicately enough, with the infamous Rodney King tape, and the bulk of the action takes place while awaiting the verdict in the Simi Valley trial of the arresting officers. (The conclusion of the action takes place during the consequent riots.) Because the story is by the original novelist of L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy, and the screenplay is by the writer of Training Day, David Ayer, the rottenness in the department rises above the casual and clubby use of euphemisms like "monkeyshines" and "gorillas," and all the way up to fabricated evidence, perjury, robbery, and murder (always in the interest of getting the bad guys, if not necessarily the right bad guys): rises, in other words, past the ears and the eyebrows. However imbalanced, however loaded, all of this is, and however improbable and facile the climactic public confession (someone pleads with the confessor to stop embarrassing himself, but the embarrassment has already spread to the spectator), the movie catches you up in its ham-fisted fervor, and director Ron Shelton has nicely mapped out the concentrated final ambush as well as the sprawling riots. And Kurt Russell is excellent (as could be expected) as a third-generation trigger-happy cop, a logical descendant of his Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. His commitment to his character, in contrast to that of the more "serious" actors of L.A. Confidential (Spacey, Crowe, Pearce), will not permit him any wiggle room for self-judgment and self-backstabbing. With Ving Rhames, Scott Speedman, Brendan Gleeson. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
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