DIRTY

Year: 2005
USA: Silver Nitrate Releasing
Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr, Clifton Collins Jr, Cole Hauser, Wyclef Jean, Keith David, Taboo, Wood Harris, Aimee Garcia, Khleo Thomas, Nicholas Gonzales, Robert LaSardo, Judy Reyes, Nate Parker, Frank Alvarez, Brittney Daniel, Robert Flores, Cesar Garcia, Kevin Grevioux, Pat Healy, Tory Kittles, Terry Kennedy, Jen Martinez, Gates McFadden, Joseph McKelheer, Mo (Maurice McRae), Edward Meza, Chris Mulkey, Jim Ortlieb, Marina Gonzalez Palmier, Tracy Phillips, Dax Ramgoolam, Bret Roberts, Nicole Robinson, Tre Rogers, Soledad St. Hilaire, Lobo Sebastian, Telisha Shaw, Mike Trenholme, Pete Vasquez, Domingo Vela, Brian White, Mark Wilson
Director: Chris Fisher
Country: USA
USA: 97 mins
USA Rated: R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexual content and drug use
USA Release Date: Limited Release - New York and Los Angeles)


Synopsis

In a city ravaged by violent crime, the police department's anti-gang task force uses any means at its disposal to get the bad guys off the streets, with cops often acting as judge, jury and executioner. Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins Jr) is at a crossroads in his young life. Having traded his gang colors for a police uniform, he now finds himself a member of a corrupt anti-gang task force where the cops are as crooked as the criminals they seek to eradicate. Placing themselves above the law, these violent cowboys take justice into their own hands on a daily basis, often with lethal results. Haunted by his involvement in the death of an innocent man, Sancho's once unshakeable faith in the unit's take-no-prisoners approach to policing is stretched to the breaking point. As he contemplates testifying against his fellow officers, Sancho is torn between his newly awakened conscience and his loyalty to his partner, Salim Adel (Cuba Gooding Jr). An amoral shake-down artist and wannabe player with a taste for hookers, cocaine and chrome wheel rims, Salim is nonetheless Sancho's best friend and the one guy who's always got his back.

It's against this tense backdrop that Salim and Sancho begin the day they are to be interviewed by two dogged Internal Affairs agents (Chris Mulkey and Judy Reyes) investigating the division's abuses. Offering Sancho a deal to come clean about the unit's misdeeds, he must decide whether to heed his conscience or his loyalty to his fellow officers.. But no sooner do the partners arrive at the anti-gang unit headquarters for morning roll call than the division Lieutenant (Cole Hauser) sends them back out into the streets with a plum extra-curricular assignment: check a bag of confiscated dope out of the evidence locker and deliver it to a henchman of gangster Damian Baine (Wyclef Jean). Baine offers the partners a split of the take if they raid a gang of amateurish Canadian drug dealers who have muscled in on his turf. Unbeknownst to Salim and Sancho, however, the Canadians are operating under the auspices of Sancho's "first family," a gang run by ruthless Latino crime kingpin Roland (Robert LaSardo). When the raid goes sour and the money disappears, the partners have to answer to the unhappy drug lord.

So as their increasingly bloody mission takes them from one end to the other of the sprawling city they've sworn to protect and serve, Salim and Sancho learn that getting clean isn't nearly as easy as being DIRTY.

From writer-director Chris Fisher (RAMPAGE: THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER MURDERS, NIGHTSTALKER), comes DIRTY, an edgy, suspenseful and action-packed story about a day in the life of two corrupt cops going for one final score. An adrenaline-fueled urban drama set in a decaying American metropolis, DIRTY cuts through the thin blue line between police corruption, gang violence and street justice.