What’s more reflective: Penn’s sunnies or Duvall’s head?
I’ll make one concession to the America spelling of “Colors” because it is the film’s title after all.
I was amazed 20 years ago when Dennis Hopper made a cop drama set in the LA gang scene, I am amazed even now that it actually happened – and that aside from some minor quibbles it actually holds up very well. For those under say 30 in the 80s the “urban” (read non-white) areas in Los Angeles were beset by crime, both petty and more serious. Two rival gangs rose up and at their peaks had many thousand members each who despised any members of the rival gangs… all of them despised the cops even worse.
A brief preamble shows that the gangs numbered greater than 70,000, the cops 250. Not good odds.
The two gangs were called the Crips and the Bloods and were distinguishable by the “Colours” that they worse, Crips were blue, the Bloods were obviously Red. As Ice T says in the theme song “Wear the wrong colour and your life might end…” The gang members even had to be kept separate in prison or else they would kill each other there!
In the midst of all this were simply not enough cops charged with maintaining the peace, keeping drugs off the streets and preventing the two gangs from killing each other. Drive by shootings were a constant threat and violent crime was rife.
Colours mostly follows two cops. The experienced and soon to retire McGavin (Robert Duvall) and new gung-ho, hotheaded rookie Hodges (Sean Penn). McGavin knows the streets and the right people on both sides of the law, Hodges just wants results quickly, and thinks McGavin is past it and should get out of his way. In the early scenes this tense dynamic comes to a head on more than one occasion as they jostle for control. Each of the two have their own moments of success and failure, they bicker and fight at times, each thinking the other has a lot to learn.
Colours is less about a series of defined events than it is a month or two in the life of a couple of cops, they perform the normal duties that I must assume were required in the era, patrols, raids, questioning suspects and generally striving to keep the peace when all around resent them – even those they are trying to protect. McGavin has a strong relationship, almost a friendship with certain known gang members who give him snippets of information, in return he seems to leave them alone to take care of themselves.
Eventually though the partners find themselves on the wrong side of some particularly naughty gang bangers (who include Don Cheadle and Damon Wayans), and they are subsequently targeted. Again this is not so much built up as a major plot development but handled as a logical outcome to providing resistance to violent criminals.
The same thing that makes Colours hard to describe is actually its strength, this is not a car-chase… shootout… manhunt… shootout… big explosion film with snappy one-liners and a huge bodycount, but a more realistic imagining of a period in time as seen by a couple of cops. By necessity it does contain elements as mentioned above but they never seem forced or simply there for entertainment value.
Colours is reasonably low key, gritty at times and deliberately paced. It is by no means the definitive LA Gang’s film (Boyz in the Hood) but it is an interesting couple of house with solid performances and a fairly believable plot. You could do a lot worse.
And to think Dennis Hopper made it!!!
Final Rating – 7 / 10. Nothing mind-blowing, but a solid urban cop drama that is never boring.
