Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Two great performances from Robert Duvall and Sean Penn, and some great direction by Dennis Hopper gives "Colors" an engrossing quality that's still alive and well, 25 years later. Duvall is the experienced cop, still working the streets and counting the days to retirement. Penn, his rookie partner with a mean streak that borders on sadistic. Forced to work together, the two LAPD uniforms butt heads as they struggle to keep L.A.'s streets safe from the ever-worsening gang warfare."Colors" shares similarities with "To Live and Die in L.A." Though far less taut than Friedkin's signature cop film, Hopper's filming on the streets of inner-city L.A. brings loads of authenticity to the proceedings. And like Friedkin, Hopper puts the audience in the front seat during a great car chase, while the busts are in-your-face and manage to excite, even after so many intervening years. The result is a gritty cop movie that seeks to address the gang problems from both sides. Showcasing several familiar faces in their pre-fame days (Leon, Don Cheadle and Damon Wayans), and boasting a surprisingly effective Herbie Hancock score, Hopper's understated cop drama is a solid effort.7/10

Dennis Hopper has directed a thoroughly exoteric movie, accessible to anyone, with not a sign of any psychedelic trappings. An occasional line sounds improvised but otherwise it's conventionally done. It's not bad, either, and might be especially illuminating for people who live in isolated little towns like Deming, New Mexico.It's a story of two cops -- a youngish hothead and hard charger (Penn) and the more laid-back and experienced man on the brink of retirement (Duvall). Both of them get the job done.The plot has Bloods and Crips prominent in the first half. That's to introduce the good folk of Deming to the idea of rival gangs in Los Angeles. But the emphasis shifts to an unnamed barrio gang of Mexican youths led by Trinidad Silva, who calls everyone "Homes", as short for "home boy" or "home boys". It doesn't matter to Silva whether the term of address is used as a singular or plural. Everybody is "Homes." Silva is fine in the role. He has an ambiguous relationship with Duvall's cop. He helps keep the barrio relatively peaceful, seeing to it that his Homes don't do much more than smoke some grass, do some crack, maybe boost things once in a while, and run up more than a dozen parking tickets. He keeps Duvall informed of what's up, while Duvall occasionally does him a favor in return. Trinidad Silva is fine in the role, but it's hard to tell how much range he had. (He's gone now.) He may have been a one-shot deal like Alfonso Bedoya, "Gold Hat" in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." The production design is outstanding. This isn't downtown LA. Nobody drinks cocktails and lives in Malibu. These are seedy, shabby, desolate neighborhoods, alive with people in the way that some kitchen cabinets seem to be alive with cockroaches. And the graffiti is everywhere and in a multiplicity of form. Some is nicely organized into epic murals, if obvious. These are, after all, in the tradition of Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco, and David Siqueiros.Maria Conchita Alonso, a Cuban singer, is pretty, vivacious, and dispensable. There is a black preacher, Troy Curvey, Jr., who mightily deplores the drugs and violence that affect the neighborhood. He and the audience at the funeral have the call-and-response pattern down pat. The ritual is interrupted by a drive-by machine gunning. There is one other drive-by shooting and one or two climactic shoot outs. As I said, this movie is commercially oriented.Not as bad as I'd expected but I hope by now we don't really need this Introduction to Gang Warfare 101, not even in Deming. And, it's a little sad -- watching this, seeing the hills and the palms and the warm sunny climate -- I kept thinking of how tranquil and accommodating the Los Angeles basin was before the city got there. The Chumash Indians lived in nearby Santa Barbara. If you dig through their ancient garbage dumps, you find that they didn't change their way of life for more than three thousand years. Why should they? They had everything they needed. Now we couldn't do without a fleet of patrol cars, that palladium of civilization.

Gang violence in L.A., an experienced police officer paired with a rookie trying to keep the peace, young people being drawn into gangs, drive-by shootings with tragic consequences, and screaming relatives following the shootings. We've seen this so many times and this 1988 film is no different. There are 2 good performances mainly by Robert Duvall and Sean Penn as the 2 police officers caught up in all this mayhem.Of course, the ending is tragic, but what else would you expect. Violence is never about to take a vacation.The ending scene is where Penn is with a new rookie, a black officer, trying to break him in. He is hot on his tail. Reminds me of Anne Baxter at the end of "All About Eve."

Colors (1988) *** (out of 4) A veteran L.A. police officer (Robert Duvall) gets teamed up with a new, hot-tempered officer (Sean Penn) just as a war between rival gangs breaks out in the streets. The two officers are constantly butting heads over the proper way to handle the situations of the street and things don't get any better once the gangs start fighting back. COLORS was a very popular movie in the day but it's not really a great film. I think there are many very good and many great things in the film but I think a major re-write on the screenplay could have really helped things because no matter how many times I watch the film I can't help but think they're trying to do way too much and end up missing a lot of stuff that should have been simple. On one hand you're looking at a cop-buddy picture and then you have a film trying to show people the law of the streets. I'm sure many were seeing these type of gangs for the first time and director Hopper certainly tries to make one understand why they're in these gangs and why they're willing to lay down their blood for their cause. What doesn't work overly well are a couple side plots dealing with Penn and his relationship with a Mexican woman (Maria Conchita Alonso) with connections to the street. Another thing that doesn't work overly well are all sorts of other subplots dealing with lower entry gang members that never really add up to much. I think there are some moments where the film goes away from the two leads for too long, which certainly makes the film drag in spots. What does work however are the performances by those two leads with both actors doing a great job and even better is the chemistry they have together. The old school Duvall and the new school Penn were the perfect selection for partners here because their acting styles are just so different that they end up mixing together so well. No actor can sell a veteran as great as Duvall and Penn was certainly starting to come into his own around this point in his career and that hot-tempered manor of his was nailed perfectly. The supporting players add some nice performances including Ron Delaney, Larry Sylvester, Don Cheadle and Marlon Wayans in a small role. I've read some reviews that say COLORS is nothing more than a blaxploitation flick for white people but I think this is a tad bit unfair. I think Hopper did a very good job at showing this gang life without glamorizing it and I also think the film does a good job at making the members humans and not just some sort of targets. Hopper certainly seemed to know the material quite well and his direction gets the job done but I think less could have been more.