Colors

Film Review by Josh Slater-Williams | 19 Aug 2015
Film title: Colors
Director: Dennis Hopper
Starring: Robert Duvall, Sean Penn, Don Cheadle, Maria Conchita Alonso, Randy Brooks, Grand Bush, Sy Richardson, Glenn Plummer, Damon Wayans
Release date: 24 Aug
Certificate: 18

Three years before Boyz n the Hood portrayed social problems in inner-city Los Angeles, Dennis Hopper’s Colors took a look at actual East LA gangs and the LAPD ‘CRASH’ unit trying to quell the violence. Robert Duvall is on fine form as an experienced cop with a more nuanced understanding of how to approach ghetto residents than his rookie partner, Sean Penn’s reckless and rather racist hothead. A young Don Cheadle, meanwhile, plays the gang leader they’re trying to stop.

Simultaneously light on plot and over-plotted, Colors, featuring a title song by Ice-T, is an interesting time capsule regarding American gang culture (Hopper actually included some real-life gang members), but it’s too meandering as a whole for its moments of fiery rage to ever really sear, nor does the screenplay make much attempt to explore the root causes of the mob violence beyond a stray surface-level comment in one isolated scene early on. [Josh Slater-Williams]

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Released on Blu-ray 24 Aug by Second Sight