Eldon Perry is a jovial guy, as criminals go -- he's a team player and a man's man, happy to share a drink and a smoke when he's not shooting anyone point-blank. The justification for his sort of violence is interesting: Eldon's a cop. He just made detective, in fact. He's a third-generation law man.
This is the seamy territory of Dark Blue, a story about the LAPD and the recent past. The film starts with footage of the Rodney King beating, and the on-going trial of the involved policemen is an ever-present whiff of anxiety in the corners of the narrative. (Okay, here's the historical note: Rodney King, an African-American, was brutally beaten by four LAPD policemen and the incident was captured on video. The involved police were charged but an all-white jury initially acquitted them; after the "not guilty" verdicts, there were riots in Los Angeles during which 54 people died, 7,000 were arrested and about $1 billion in damages was done. That's the background. The LAPD did not, by the way, offer their full co-operation on this film. No surprise there.)
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