Dark Blue (2002)
Directed by Ron Shelton
Set during the Rodney King riots, a robbery homicide investigation triggers a series of events that will cause a corrupt LAPD officer to question his tactics.
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What critics compared Dark Blue to
A Navy man himself, writer-director David Ayer smartly moves away from the feverish cop and urban crime dramas he's written and sometimes directed (Training Day, S.W.A.T., Dark Blue, Harsh Times, Street Kings, End of Watch) to channel his dramatic ferocity into a story of the Allies' final ground assault on the Third Reich.
Writer-director Ayer specializes in tough, unsentimental movies about societies of violent men trying to live by unwritten codes of ethics, a theme that reappears in his scripts for U-571, Training Day, The Fast And The Furious, Dark Blue, Harsh Times, and End Of Watch.
Since then he has written “The Fast and the Furious,” “S.W.A.T.,” “Dark Blue” and after making his directorial debut with his screenplay “Harsh Times” directed a second film in 2012, “End of Watch,” a realistic and memorable account of policing in L.A.’s dicier areas.
Easily the most ambitious film in Ayer’s canon of cannon fodder, “Fury” aims higher and shoots deeper than the filmmaker’s previous men-with-guns epics “Training Day,” “Dark Blue,” “End of Watch” and the recent DEA bust, “Sabotage.”
Tough as it is, this doesn’t pack quite as much punch as “End of Watch,” a story about two police officers that arguably ties with “Dark Blue” as Ayer’s best film.
It's a bravura action sequence of quick shots and lingering violence, the kind that Ayer has always been good at, even when his films — like the James Ellroy misfire "Dark Blue" — lost the thread of their drama.
After directing Dark Blue, writing-directing Hollywood Homicide and co-writing this disaster, Shelton is in a freeway catastrophe of his own.
Writer-director David Ayer has an impressive roster of cop movies to his credit, and End of Watch is as good as the best of them, which include Dark Blue (2002, screenplay), Training Day (2001, screenplay) and Harsh Times (2001, screenplay and director).
Written and directed by LAPD aficionado David Ayer (his screenplays include "Training Day," "Dark Blue," and "S.W.A.T." ), "End of Watch" doesn't benefit from its framing device, which has Taylor, a night-school student, filming his daily adventures for a class project.
His screenplays for "Training Day," "Dark Blue" and "Harsh Times" explored the psychology of the rogue officer with gusto; his "Street Kings" (adapted from James Ellroy's hard-boiled script) did the same.
I'm not sure who appointed David Ayer poet laureate for the LAPD, but at least he takes the job seriously; along with the usual mean-streets bluster and brutality, his cop-thriller screenplays (Training Day, Dark Blue) conscientiously record the hardening effects of a thankless and frequently pointless job.
Particularly by David Ayer, who wrote “Training Day,” “Dark Blue,” “S.W.A.T.” and “Harsh Times,” along with directing “Street Kings.”
Ayer is a filmmaker who clearly has an affinity to the lives of those who enforce the law, having worked on such scripts as “Training Day,” “S.W.A.T.” and “Dark Blue” and directed “Harsh Times” and “Street Kings.”
Ron Shelton departs from his usually lighter fare, such as "White Men Can't Jump" and "Bull Durham," in his visualization of the story (James Ellroy, "LA Confidential") and screenplay (David Ayer, "Training Day").
A peek at director Ron Shelton’s resume would make for a quick dismissal of him as a sports guy — Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump and Tin Cup.