Cop flick makes you say 'Uhhh'

Ron Shelton has a problem with filmmaking and he needs to stop. "Dark Blue," lingering behind the stench of his putrid waste of celluloid that was "Play It to the Bone," is sufficient evidence that he needs to stop making motion pictures. \nSgt. Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) is a cop who drinks a lot, has marital problems and behaves in a cliché, corrupt-cop way under the direction of his commanding SIS officer. He's got a young rookie partner Bobby (Scott Speedman) who he makes do much of the said dirty work. Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) is a gospel preaching, righteous man who is the sole element intent on bringing down police corruption. Place these characters in the midst of the Rodney King trial with riots running rampant through a racially stereotyped image of L.A. and let them squirm to solve a ridiculous homicide and voila: "Dark Blue."\nI tried to entertain myself through this movie to no avail. There are so many bad, unimportant, undeveloped plot elements here that I struggle to call it a screenplay. With a story by James Ellroy ("L.A. Confidential") and a script by David Ayer ("Training Day"), I'd hoped for more. But the characters are narrow and unnecessary. The story is like a bad installment of N.Y.P.D. Blue and should have been left to television, or better yet, fallen victim to the delete button of a United Artists executive's computer.\nThe material here is not worthy of being told cinematically and it's clear that generous vulgarities and a dash of unneeded nudity were added to justify an R-rating. The acting is terrible on all counts. Kurt Russell is one of the more underrated actors in Hollywood, but is given such poor direction and dialogue that he's left floundering and poor Ving Rhames is so restrained that he's unintentionally static. We get maybe ten full sentences from him. And let's not forget the superb performance in Master P's cameo. That's what sold me.\nThe film is uninspired, very boring, so uninteresting that you couldn't care less about this film that wants desperately to be a social commentary on racism, police brutality and ethics, but so blatantly fails. With so many other recent worthy contributions to the genre like "Training Day" and "Narc," why waste your time?