It's Me Day, my Sunday (Friday), where I felt like blowing cash on shopping for myself, the in the mood for seeing a cop flick while eating a hot dog and nachos. Good times.

I was going to say "formulaic" cop flick, but Dark Blue isn't. Sure, it's full of bad cops, worse cops and good cops, and has plenty of action, bad guys and the obligatory stop at a nudie bar to see some bare breasts, but the movie goes beyond the "we built this city on bullets" lingo to some interesting plot points.

The racial strife is thick, all the more so because the movie is wrapped around the five days of deliberations of the Rodney King beating trial in 1992, and the L.A. riots after the officers were pronounced not guilty (this may be a bad time to say that King should have gotten his butt beat for leading police on a high-speed chase while high and resisting arrest while his pals laid unmolested on the side of the road because they cooperated).

What got to be a little silly though was the painting of every white cop as dirty and every black cop as perfect. The filmmaker didn't even pretend to paint a line between good and bad cops on either side. Of course, all the asians in the movie are strip club-pimping-gangsters, so maybe they have a gripe, too. And the blacks on the South Central streets during the King riots aren't exactly on their best behavior, either. Okay, no one is innocent, and those with consciences are punished in other ways. In fact, I do believe that every single character with a speaking part is given some fatal flaw of morality.

Kurt Russell is solid as always as a special agent in the Special Investigations Squad (SIS), a super-cop of sorts, who is also as dirty as they come. He's abrasive, full of foul-language and racial talk, alcoholic and kills any bad guy who "deserves" it. But he's a dominant actor and commands every scene to his benefit. Great performance by Russell and the movie's worth seeing if only for him.

Ving Rhames is the black (duh) chief of police who is not happy with Russell's tactics, "declaring war" on him. Ving doesn�t do much besides grandstanding and has about the same amount of dialogue as one of his Radio Shack commercials.

There�s an outlandish subplot with Homicide and ER babe Michael Michele as both a sergeant and partner between the sheets to Bobby (Scott Speedman), Russell's fresh partner on the streets. Bobby is new to the SIS squad and not exactly ready for action, leaving him with the only conscience for most of the movie.

One slight negative is in editing, with a few awkward transitions, and some of the mouthed dialogue didn't match the voice track. Another, the music has some early 90s vibes, but the score sounds more like a cheesy early 80s cop show.

Still, there's enough intrigue and tension to stay focused, and a few times the plot takes a different path from formula to keep the audience focused. Because of this, and mainly because of Russell, Dark Blue is worth serving (via your money at the box office) and protecting (from critics).