Old Movie Review: Colors directed by Dennis Hopper

Here is the last of my reviews commemorating the career of the late Dennis Hopper. Unfortunately, this movie was hardly worth my time, but I stuck with it to the end. The last time I walked out on a movie was Father of the Bride Part II when I was 17. So here we have the 4th movie directed by Dennis Hopper. He left a much better legacy as an actor than as a director.

It’s almost not even worth writing anything about a 22 year old film that time has all but forgotten. The Dennis Hopper directed Los Angeles cops and gangs drama Colors has not survived the long lens of history very well. It’s true that most films from that period have not dated well. The fashions, the hairstyles and the musical scores in particular have a distinct late 80s feel in several police dramas from that period including Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop.

Sean Penn and Robert Duvall star as Danny McGavin and Bob Hodges, police officers partnered together in a special anti-gang unit patrolling the barrios of L.A. trying to curb drugs and gang violence between the Crips and the Bloods. You can imagine the movie isn’t going to have a happy ending. Hodges is a veteran of the force. He’s reserved on the streets and is more interested in making friends and earning respect than simply with busting heads. Maybe he’s slowed down as he’s reached middle age because he’s got a wife and kids and only a year before his pension. So suggest McGavin, whose blood is pumping at full octane from their first day out together. He wants to haul in every thug who’s carrying an ounce of crack, no matter what the consequences to their credibility with snitches.

Michael Schiffer’s screenplay wisely avoids spinning an elaborate case that makes it appear at the end of the film that all Los Angeles will be a better place because of the death or incarceration of a single criminal. The truth is that the battle against gangs and drugs is never ending. When one kingpin falls, another pops up in his place. This film seems to be aware of this detail and instead focuses on a small case that will bring in Rocket (a very young Don Cheadle), the organizer of several drive-by shootings.

Where Schiffer fails is in bringing any feeling of authenticity to the dialogue. The script has the ring of someone who has spent absolutely no time on the streets of L.A. interacting with gang members. All the scenes with the gang members have dialogue that feels so forced it’s a wonder the actors were able to maintain straight faces during shooting. Somehow incredibly, John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood followed only three years later and hardly feels dated now. Singleton grew up in L.A. and had an ear for the language of the street. His movie felt and still feels authentic. Also, I’m no authority on the gangs of L.A., but I question the plausibility of a tight-knit gang that includes Latinos, blacks and a white guy.

Hopper’s direction is nothing spectacular. It’s standard action drama. His action sequences are sometimes a bit overwrought as when a group of about a dozen gang members open up on the house of a rival with several automatic weapons in a shootout that lasts longer than it should without the police arriving on the scene. One particular scene that shows great directorial skills involves a man-to-man brawl in the cramped space of a restaurant kitchen. It doesn’t have the polished choreography of other cinematic melees, giving it a sense that the two men involved (and perhaps the actors) are in real danger.

There’s hardly a thing that goes right in this movie. In addition to Cheadle’s small role, there’s a part here for a young Damon Wayans, who was a barely known comedian at the time (before “In Living Color”). He hits the wrong note in every scene, trying to play for comedy what should be a more dramatic take on a low-level gang member who can’t stay off the drugs he’s supposed to be pushing.

The one thing it has going for it, and this is very feint praise, is the relationship between Hodges and McGavin. It starts off as the standard veteran and rookie partnering with all the expected tension. Convention would dictate that they help each other out during a harrowing confrontation with the enemy and come out the other side stronger as a result. That doesn’t happen here. They never get the chance to work out their differences.


[SPOILER WARNING] There’s a bit of a trite resolution in which Hodges is killed in the line of duty, the result of which is that McGavin slows down his attitude as we see in a brief coda where he has a new partner who exhibits the same panache he had in the beginning. We’re meant to believe that McGavin’s whole demeanor has changed as a result of this tragedy. In some way this final scene illustrates the cyclical nature of the gang violence that plagued L.A. in those days, but like everything that came before, it just doesn’t ring true.