Critical Reception
The film received a normalized score of 57 out of 100 from reviewer website Metacritic, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
William Arnold of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave the film a positive review:
| “ | Ron Shelton's Dark Blue is another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of Training Day and Narc. Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair... The movie is also a change of pace and big comeback for director Shelton, best known for his sports comedies (Bull Durham, Tin Cup) and long off the A-list. | ” |
However, the film also received myriad bad reviews. From Ellroy via Shelton of L.A. Weekly:
| “ | Dark Blue is stuffed to the gills with blithely improbable coincidence and subsidiary story line... Shelton is a likable, generous director who's made two pretty good films (Blaze and Bull Durham), but it's not at all clear he has the chops to take on an action movie, let alone the intricacies of police politics — let alone the politics of race, about which he had more imaginative things to say in White Men Can't Jump. | ” |
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