Cuba Gooding Jr.keeps going after that second Oscar. He tried for it by playing a developmentally disabled man in 'Radio' and now, in the new police thriller 'Dirty,' he goes for that same bad-ass nigga Oscar that Denzel Washington won for 'Training Day'. For the role of Salim Adel, a corrupt Los Angeles cop involved in a murderous, convoluted scheme to protect other dirty cops from an internal affairs investigation, Gooding just seems to be acting-out. He tries on game-faces back from junior high school days and his usually light, appealing voice sometimes cracks right in the middle of an especially vulgar monologue. Gooding’s Salim spouts such epithets as “Let’s go punk down the m…..f……!” like a kid who hasn’t yet learned how to cuss. Like film itself, there’s too much profanity.

Writer-director Chris Fisher’s flamboyant impulse exploits the Ramparts division police scandal which has provided Hollywood with a new generation of corrupt cop portrayals (but none so good as Charles Burnett’s prophetic ‘The Glass Shield’). ‘Dirty’ simply glorifies the machismo made popular by gangsta rap and perpetuated by both rappers-turned-actors (‘Ice-T, DMX, L.L. Cool J.) and actors who envy the street cred of rappers (‘Denzel, Samuel L. Jackson, Gooding). This professional rivalry gets played out between Salim and his partner, Armando Sancho (Clifton Collins), a Latino officer who quit gangbanging to join the force. His naïve optimism supplies ‘Dirty’s’ voice-over narration: “I loved my partner like my brother. I loved my union like my family.” It’s Sancho’s bad luck to find himself cruising in the front seat with a partner who is the thuggiest thug in the ghetto.

Sancho wants to come clean, but Salim just gets dirtier. Harassing innocent white citizens, molesting a Latina teenager (a scene right out of the Thandie Newton assault in "Crash) and trading self-hating bluffs with drug-dealing homies, Salim makes it impossible for Sancho to follow the code. He treacherously demonstrates that there’s no more hope for good deeds in this rotten environment, just low-down survival. “Everybody so rich off the coke they aren’t mad-doggin’ anymore,” Salim informs Sancho. “We’re the only gang, nigga!” Older movies that encouraged police department reform used to offer once-standard wisdom against “gangsters with a badge” (from the 1953 "‘On Dangerous Ground’). But ‘Dirty’ doesn’t take that observation seriously. Fisher takes advantage of hip-hop’s lucrative bad-ass attitude by letting Salim show-off the kind of “gangsta” behavior that has been the cause for so much police brutality and abuse. Add Sancho’s guilty visions of ghosts and ‘Dirty’ becomes the first horrorcore police drama since Denzel's 'Fallen.'

Fisher’s many cinematic tricks lure viewers into reveling in this degradation. He distorts scenes using Tony Scott’s iridescent disco colors. He uses quick cuts, zoom lenses and fakes semi-documentary realism like the Brazilian exploitation film 'City of God.' His dramatization of behind-the-scenes police skullduggery (featuring Keith David as a dishonest commander) comes right out of the Antoine Fuqua playbook. None of this flash and sass gets to the truth of why cops go bad. Cuba Gooding Jr.’s embarrassing performance begs one question: Why are the dirtiest cops in movies always black?