Colors | |
---|---|
![]() Original film poster | |
Directed by | Dennis Hopper |
Screenplay by | Michael Schiffer |
Story by | Richard Di Lello Michael Schiffer |
Produced by | Robert H. Solo |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Haskell Wexler |
Edited by | Robert Estrin |
Music by | Herbie Hancock |
Distributed by | Orion Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 120 min. (original release) 127 min. (Director's Cut) |
Country | United States |
Languages | English Spanish |
Budget | $10 million |
Box office | $46,616,067 (domestic) [1] |
Colors is a 1988 American police procedural action crime film starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, and directed by Dennis Hopper. The film takes place in the gang ridden neighborhoods of Los Angeles: late-1980s South Central Los Angeles, Echo Park, Westlake and East Los Angeles. The film centers on Bob Hodges (Duvall), an experienced Los Angeles Police Department C.R.A.S.H. officer, and his rookie partner, Danny McGavin (Penn), who try to stop the gang violence between the Bloods, the Crips, and Hispanic street gangs. Colors relaunched Hopper as a director 19 years after Easy Rider , and inspired discussion over its depiction of gang life and gang violence.
Two policemen, "Uncle" Bob Hodges, a respected LAPD officer and Vietnam veteran, and rookie officer Danny McGavin, have just been teamed together in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit that patrols Northwest Los Angeles, East Los Angeles and South Los Angeles.
Hodges is appreciated on the local streets. He is diplomatic on the surface, preaching "rapport" to gang members to encourage them to offer help when it is truly needed, recognizing that every action cops take is scrutinized by the people they are trying to help. Hodges explains his view on policing to his young partner with a joke about bulls and cows.
Although the pair bond quickly, life lessons are seemingly lost on the aggressive, cavalier McGavin, whose stunts soon bring him notoriety among the gang members and the people, such as attacking a graffiti artist by spraying his eyes with the paint can. McGavin wrecks their first unmarked car during a pursuit. Its replacement is vivid yellow, resulting in McGavin being nicknamed "Pac-Man" by officers and gang members alike.
McGavin has a short-lived romance with a waitress named Louisa who, like the offended Hodges, feels the weight of the Pac-Man persona. Amidst the strain of these relationships, the murder of a Bloods gang member escalates tension between two other gangs. A series of seemingly random incidents culminates with the two partners finding themselves in the middle of the Crips, Bloods and Hispanic barrio war.
The 21st Street Gang, led by a criminal named Frog, attempts to negotiate a peace similar to Hodges and steer clear of the melee. To protect his partner, Hodges unwittingly exposes Frog as his source on the Crips leader Rocket's scheme to kill McGavin. Each group attempts to right the wrongs against their respective crews as police strive to prevent the hit and stand their authority over the fall out.
In the end, CRASH moves in on the would-be last crew standing—the 21st Street Gang. While arresting Frog, Hodges is fatally wounded by a 21st Street Gang gunman, nicknamed "Bird", trying to do the hit on McGavin. With medics en route, McGavin comforts Hodges and breaks down with regret as the elder partner falls into delirium and dies.
Sometime later, a more reserved McGavin has a rookie partner, a black cop who grew up in the neighborhood where they patrol and sports an attitude like the "Pac-Man". McGavin tells him the same joke about the bulls that Hodges taught him, and the younger officer reciprocates in the same way as the young McGavin. The film ends with McGavin considering the cycle as the pair drive on and continue their patrol.
The movie was filmed entirely in Los Angeles in 1987. The original script by Richard Di Lello took place in Chicago and was more about drug dealing than gang members. Dennis Hopper ordered changes, so Michael Schiffer was hired and the setting was changed to Los Angeles and the focus of the story became more about the world of gang members. [2] [3]
The joke that Hodges tells McGavin regarding the two bulls was lifted from the Pat Conroy novel The Great Santini (which was made into a movie that also starred Duvall) and explains how the character Lt. Col. "Bull" Meechum got his nickname. [4]
Real gang members were hired as "on-location security" as well as actors/extras by producer Robert H. Solo. Two of them were shot during filming. Well-known gang leader and community activist T. Rodgers was cast as Dr. Feelgood. [5]
On April 2, 1987, Sean Penn was arrested for punching an extra on the set of this film who was taking photos of him without permission. Penn was sentenced to 33 days in jail for this assault.
A soundtrack containing mainly hip hop music was released on April 15, 1988, by Warner Bros. Records. It peaked at 31 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold on July 12, 1988.
The theme song, "Colors", was written and performed by American rapper Ice-T, and issued as the title track for the soundtrack to the film.
Colors earned over $46 million in its domestic release. [6]
Colors received both praise and criticism. The film has a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 reviews, with the consensus; "Colors takes a hard-hitting yet nuanced look at urban gang violence, further elevated by strong performances from a pair of well-matched leads." [7] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [8]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated that it "has a superb eye for the poisonous flowering of gang culture amid ghetto life, and an ear to match; along with brilliant cinematography by Haskell Wexler, it's also got a fierce, rollicking sense of motion." [9]
Roger Ebert hailed it as "a special movie – not just a police thriller, but a movie that has researched gangs and given some thought to what it wants to say about them." [10]
The Washington Post's critics, Desson Howe and Hal Hinson were split, with Howe stating that Hopper "covers the mayhem with unadorned, documentary immediacy that transcends otherwise formulaic cop-fare" [11] and Hinson stating that it "must be the least incendiary film about gang life ever made." [12]
One of the more negative reviews of the film appeared on the BBC's Ceefax service, on which critic Louise Hart remarked: "The main weakness of the film is that it concentrates far less on the street gangs than on the growing relationship between the two cops." [13]
The film has been blamed for inspiring gang violence in the country of Belize, with many members of the Crips and Bloods deported to the country from the United States in the 1990s bringing the film - and their own gang affiliations - with them to the country. [14]
The Bloods are a primarily African-American street gang which was founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. It is identified by the red color worn by its members and by particular gang symbols, including distinctive hand signs.
Raymond Lee Washington was an American gangster, known as the founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles. Washington formed the Crips as a minor street gang in the late 1960s in South Los Angeles, becoming a prominent local crime boss. In 1971, Washington formed an alliance with Stanley "Tookie" Williams, establishing the Crips as the first major African-American street gang in Los Angeles, and served as one of the co-leaders. In 1974, Washington was convicted of robbery and received a five-year prison sentence, during which his leadership and influence in the Crips declined.
The Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) was a specialized gang intelligence unit of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) tasked with combating gang-related crime between 1979 and 2000. The unit was established in the South Central district of Los Angeles, California, United States, to combat rising gang violence during the period. Each of the LAPD's 18 divisions had a CRASH unit assigned to it, whose primary goal was to suppress gang-related crimes in the city, which came about primarily from the increase in illegal drug trade.
The Black Guerrilla Family is an African American black power prison gang, street gang, and political organization founded in 1966 by George Jackson, George "Big Jake" Lewis, and W.L. Nolen while they were incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California.
The Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) serves communities to the west of Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) including Silver Lake, Echo Park, Pico-Union and Westlake, all together designated as the Rampart patrol area. Its name is derived from Rampart Boulevard, one of the principal thoroughfares in its patrol area. The original station opened in 1966, located at 2710 West Temple Street. In 2008, the staff moved southeast to a newer facility located at 1401 West 6th Street. With 164,961 residents occupying a 5.4-square-mile (14 km2) area, Rampart is one of Los Angeles's most densely populated communities.
The Rollin 60s Neighborhood Crips is a "set" of the Crips street gang alliance based in Los Angeles, California, originally formed in Los Angeles in 1976 from the Westside Crips and having since spread to other cities in the United States. Membership is estimated to be around 1,600 people, making it one of the largest gangs in the Los Angeles area.
The Crips are a primarily African-American alliance of street gangs that are based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips began as an alliance between two autonomous gangs, and developed into a loosely connected network of individual "sets", often engaged in open warfare with one another. Its members have traditionally worn blue clothing since around 1973.
The Watts truce was a 1992 peace agreement among rival street gangs in Los Angeles, California, declared in the neighborhood of Watts. The truce was reached just days before the 1992 Los Angeles riots and, although not universally adhered to, was a major factor in the decline of street violence in the city between the 1990s and 2010s.
The Jungles faction of the Black P. Stones street gang is a "set" of the Bloods gang alliance in Los Angeles. Originating in Los Angeles' Baldwin Village neighborhood in the 1960s, the Black P. Stones became one of the largest gangs in the city. The gang has been linked to various crimes, including murders, assaults, robberies, narcotics violations and firearms violations, and has been the subject of numerous FBI and LAPD investigations.
Dead Homiez was filmed on location in South Central Los Angeles. The film stars the Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. The movie also stars Treyvon Green and Cynthia Berry. The director of the movie was Billy Wright.
The Pirus are a subset of the larger Bloods gang alliance, an organized crime group in the United States.
Crips and Bloods: Made in America is a 2008 documentary by Stacy Peralta that examines the rise of the Crips and Bloods, prominent gangs in America who have been at war with each other. The documentary focuses on the external factors that caused African-American youth to turn to gangs and questions the political and law enforcement response to the rise of gang culture.
The Grape Street Watts Crips is a "set" of the Crips gang based in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The gang's rivalry with the Bounty Hunter Bloods has been described as being "the most violent and long lasting feud between two gangs that are in the Watts area."
The Bounty Hunter Watts Bloods, also known as the Bounty Hunter Bloods, is a "set" of the Bloods gang alliance situated in the Nickerson Gardens public housing projects in Watts, Los Angeles.
The Rollin' 30s Harlem Crips are a "set" of the Crips alliance of street gangs. The gang was formed by Belizean American Crips who had moved from South Los Angeles to Belize and then to Harlem, New York.
Timothy M. Brennan and Robert Ladd joined the Compton Police Department as officers in 1982 and 1983, respectively. In 1988, they were promoted to become Compton's two-man gang unit. The police department could only afford to have two people at the time, even though many smaller cities typically had up to four times as many. As the gang unit, Brennan and Ladd were responsible for dealing with and investigating over fifty-five gangs in the 10.1 square mile area that make up the City of Compton. They have served as the primary or assisting investigating officers on hundreds of gang-related murders and thousands of gang-related shootings, and witnessed instances of gang-related rapes, robberies, drive-by shootings, and shootings at police officers.
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The Crips and the Bloods, two street gangs founded in Los Angeles, California, have been engaged in a gang war since the 1970s. The war is made up of smaller, local conflicts perpetrated by chapters of both gangs, and has mostly taken place in major cities in the United States, especially Los Angeles (L.A.). It is also present in other countries, including Belize. The gangs often identify themselves using clothing colored blue for Crips and red for Bloods; people wearing those colors in gang territory are often targets of violence.
In gang terminology, a set refers to a subgroup within a larger gang alliance. Sets vary in size and internal structure, and different sets within the same gang are known to fight one another. The term "set" is often used in gangsta rap when describing gang activities.