Penn is truly remarkable here as Officer Danny McGavin (aka Pac-man). I also must say that aside of few elements I liked Hopper's fourth directorial effort, it's good enough for a Saturday night.

Set in Los Angeles the film show us the gangs, there... (read more) Penn is truly remarkable here as Officer Danny McGavin (aka Pac-man). I also must say that aside of few elements I liked Hopper's fourth directorial effort, it's good enough for a Saturday night.

Set in Los Angeles the film show us the gangs, there's certainly "Low Rider" and revenges and killings. There are certainly some important plot points dealing with the gangs but this is the cops' show, this is the show of Robert Duvall and Sean Penn. We see them doing their daily work activities, the film takes the typical formula of having a veteran cop (certainly played by Robert Duvall) dealing with a rookie that acts as wild as he once acted and is mostly about Sean Penn's character and how it changes. The ending (with Pac-man taking the role of the experimented cop of Robert Duvall's character Bob Hodges) is the expected and the only possible one since we have a generic main story line. And certainly it may sound as a bad thing the word generic but pretty much while the film has a formula it still delivers interesting things and exciting moments. It also works because both Duvall and Penn are nothing less than great; it's really good and entertaining to see these couple of cops.

But not all the acting is good. For instance, Maria Conchita Alonso is pretty bad as the love interest of Pac-man; her character, Louisa Gomez, is from the gang world and of course the fact that she is dating a cop will bring the typical plot points of having Pac-man being rejected because he is affecting Louisa's familiars by doing his job. It may not work the love part of the film but some other parts work perfectly like for instance the whole thing when Pac-man finally changes: it may not be a total surprise of a plot point but having a character like Pac-man (for a reason I must say Penn was perfectly cast here) acting finally a bit more reasonable and still getting the blame (that in this "world" means being in dire straits) was a really good part for me.

Sure you will find lots of crap music (boy, those chase scenes were almost all ruined by the crappy soundtrack) and some other bad elements but hell also Penn and Duvall... it's a good and entertaining Hopper film.

Thurd favorite..old ways

great sean penn movie, a must see

The pop and lock dance the gang member does is burned into my brain. That was awesome. The rest of the movie I forget. I would describe this movie as forgettable.

The death scene of Robert Duvall was epic.