Ron Shelton directs a tough, muscular cop thriller, taking a story by James Ellroy set around the time of the Watts riots and updating it to the Rodney King era.

Kurt Russell gives a terrific performance as Perry, the grizzled, unscrupulous LAPD cop who gets results at any cost. Scott Speedman is the naive young rookie Bobby, being slowly but surely corrupted by Perry's murderous cynicism. Brendan Gleeson is their crooked boss, and Ving Rhames is the principled chief who aims to bring them down.

Despite the overt setting of racial conflict, this picture carefully contrives a neutral black-and-white pairing for the various manifestations of hero and villain and there is something forced and unconvincing about Russell's final speech at his (horribly ironic) promotion ceremony.

But the picture has heft and power, fuelled by Russell's despair and self-loathing at the legacy of hate bequeathed to him by his father and grandfather: both cops. And the riot sequences at the finish are horribly real. If only the film had ended with them.