DIRTY
R, 97 minutes

“Dirty” wears its unoriginal plot points on its sleeve, which seems strange until you realize that its makers pride themselves on being derivative. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Clifton Collins Jr. play two corrupt cops who are having one of those unbelievably high-pressure days that would send most people back to bed. One of them is planning to testify against the other at the end of their shift, and their corrupt lieutenant wants them dead, as do two rival gang lords, a teenage girl, and, by the end of the movie, the audience.

Mr. Gooding was obviously hoping that his over-the-top portrayal of a corrupt Los Angeles policeman would do for his career what “Training Day” did for Denzel Washington’s. But he neglected one important difference: Denzel wasn’t in “Dirty.” This movie has all the swagger, and half the smarts, of a 14-year-old boy jacked up on 50 Cent videos. Coincidentally, 14-year-old boys are probably the only viable audience for this slab of wannabe attitude with its crypto-profundo voice-overs. (Consider: “You can’t change the color of your heart,” and “Things are clearer when you’re dead.”)

Directed by Chris Fisher, who obviously thinks exciting drama depends on how much the camera shakes, “Dirty” bears so little relation to reality that it might as well be a cartoon. It’s clear that the director thinks he’s serving the audience an explosive Molotov cocktail about race, class, life, and death. But he’s ended up with weak tea.

– Grady Hendrix

TSOTSI
R, 94 minutes

Despite bearing all the red flags of cinematic junk, “Tsotsi” is a very good movie – almost a great one.

The South African film, based on an Athol Fugard novel, follows a criminal who steals a car and decides to keep the baby he finds in the backseat. It is being distributed by Miramax, the brand name for middlebrow, prestige film junk food (see: “Shakespeare in Love,” “Chocolat,” “All the Pretty Horses”). Miramax movies more often than not resemble an aging Upper West Sider, but “Tsotsi” is a flashy, hardboiled crime flick driven hard by a kwaito hip-hop beat.

The hardest thing in the movie is the face of Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), a criminal kingpin barely out of his teens. A blank slate, his mug is compulsively watchable. After shooting a woman and stealing her car (oh, and beating his friend’s face into mush), Tsotsi decides not to abandon the baby. Instead, he decides to take care of it, a task for which he is singularly unsuited.

His desperation to save the child and, by proxy, to redeem his own lousy childhood, is doomed to fail. With every misstep you feel Tsotsi holding onto his last chance so hard that it’s crumbling in his hands. Shot in gorgeous widescreen, this is one of the few recent movies set in Africa (“Lord of War,” “The Constant Gardener”) to suggest that maybe the stories of black Africans are of interest, too.

– G.H.

WORKINGMAN’S DEATH
unrated, 122 minutes

Most of the individuals in “Workingman’s Death” look as if they’re made of dust; some spend most of their lives buried underground. The documentary, by German director Michael Glawogger, focuses on five occupations in different parts of the world, and on workers who struggle with dirty, exhausting, and often extremely dangerous jobs.

“Workingman’s Death” examines their lives with neither disparagement nor nostalgia. The film does little to guide the viewers’ opinions, and often works simply to record the subjects’ lives instead of concerning itself with characters or stories. Mr. Glawogger’s camera focuses on its subjects in long and emotionless shots, without a narrator to interpret the images.

But ideas do emerge from the pastiche. Images of the workers are contrasted with the romanticized workers of communist statuary. Tourists take photographs; a young Chinese couple mention that they feel a connection to the past in the steel city of Liaoning; and in Duisburg-Nord Country Park, Germany, an old factory is turned into a kind of theme park, complete with light effects and surly teens.

Although the film is unrated, the portrait of Nigerian butchers slaughtering cattle toward the end is far more than most children – and most adults, for that matter – will be able to stomach. Without blinking, the camera observes as the animal’s throat is cut, as it struggles, bleeds, and eventually dies. This look at death, and the men who deal in it, is more shocking than the sort of death that can be seen in all but the rarest horror or action films. The German endcredits could have easily read “many animals were harmed in the making of this film.” All in a day’s work.

– Kevin Lam

RUNNING SCARED
R, 122 minutes

It’s fitting that New Line created buzz for its new crime thriller through a racy video game on its official Web site. Much like your typical first-person shooter, “Running Scared” is gleefully propulsive, with a constant threat of violence and a nuttily urgent storyline. As long as that’s what you’re expecting, you won’t be disappointed.

Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker, who looks as generic as a video-game character) is a small-time New Jersey mafioso with a problem. The murder weapon he was supposed to dump was pocketed by his son’s playmate, Oleg (Cameron Bright). The moody kid takes the shiny snubnose on a flight through the night, with Joey in hot pursuit.

Tailing Joey are his suspicious mobster bosses. And they in turn are fending off a vile detective (Chazz Palminteri) angling for a million-dollar payoff. Joey’s wife, Teresa (a fiery, bethonged Vera Farmiga), worries while slinging tough love. Then, inexplicably, suburban-nightmare pedophiles nab Oleg, whose abusive father, by the way, is a John Wayne-worshipping Slav in a meth lab.

And so on. The details and pace only get more febrile. But unlike Tony Scott’s similar efforts in “Domino,” director Wayne Kramer has a pulp artist’s mad integrity. As “The Cooler” demonstrated, he likes a snappy premise and can put a spin on cliches. He brashly shoots the first 20 minutes in mostly quick-cut close-ups, and turns a tired crackhead into a breathy monster like the wraith behind the diner in “Mulholland Drive.”

Mr. Walker, Ms. Farmiga, and the lineup of burnished mobsters comport themselves with a gabby “how-you-doin'” ease that’s familiar but effective. But poor Mr. Bright, the latest child actor with a creepy gaze (see “Birth”), still looks and sounds like an extra from a lost “Children of the Corn” sequel.

– Nicolas Rapold