Or: Hill Street Blues with an adult certificate. This street-level thriller about the police's crack-down on ghetto gang warfare even has Trinidad Silva as one of the gang heads, a function he performed similarly as Jesus on Hill Street. That series perhaps first made the outside world aware of the armed street gangs - bloods and royals and the like - bossing the backstreets of such cities as Los Angeles. Director Dennis Hopper's film turns this situation into a slam-bang action film with dramatic shootouts that recall gangster films of the Thirties. Robert Duvall is a wily veteran cop and Sean Penn his cocky, aggressive young partner. Their relationship follows a predictable pattern down to the final scene, but then this, unlike Hill Street Blues, is a drama where actions always speak louder than words.

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