What happens when men in blue, sworn to protect and to serve, fly out of control? If we're lucky, we get a good movie out of it. If we're really lucky, we get a larger than life character to cheer and to fear. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Keanu Reaves, of all people, will follow in the steel-toed shoes of some of cinema's finest as a cop who goes on an avenging rampage in David Ayer's Street Kings, which opens tomorrow. That made me reflect on my favorite out of control cinematic cops, men in blue who break free from the laws of god and man. Let us know who we missed in the comments section. But be nice, or we'll track you down and crack you over the head with a night stick.

1. Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry

Clint is so cool as Harry Callahan that he can just glare at bad guys and they give themselves up. Dirty Harry never met a criminal he couldn't beat up, a sergeant he couldn't hate, or a partner he couldn't get killed. He can't help it: he married justice a long time ago and the blind old bat won't leave him alone until he takes out the garbage. Don't even think about getting in his way: he solved the Zodiac killings in 102 minutes! Dirty Harry paved the way for several sequels and countless gruff, lone wolf outlaw police detectives.

Putting together last week's list of my favorite screenplays of the 2000's was relatively easy. I came up with about ten worthy candidates and narrowed from there. When I started putting together this week's list -- my favorite screenplays of the 1990's -- things got a lot more complicated. I had a much larger list of worthy candidates to choose from. It made me realize that a) the 90's, particularly the late 90's, was a genuinely incredible time for film, and b) I was going to have to split my list into two halves: 1995 -- 1999 and 1990 -- 1994.

So, in support of all the great screenwriters currently on strike, what follows is my favorite screenplays produced between 1995 and 1999. Read that last sentence carefully! If you've got movies you'd add to or subtract from my list, I would love to hear them, but make sure your choice fits the criteria. On my 2000's list, I was getting comments like "How DARE you not include Citizen Kane, you freaking idiot?"

Now then, with all apologies to the scripts it killed me to leave off (Office Space, A Simple Plan, As Good As it Gets, Chasing Amy, Lone Star, Three Kings, Swingers, Jackie Brown, Kingpin, I could go on and on), here is my alphabetical list:

Even though I hated his Miami Vice movie, I still consider myself a fan of Michael Mann's work, and I continue to look forward to whatever he delivers next. And it looks like his next will be something to really, really look forward to. Variety reports that Mann will direct a film noir about a Hollywood murder investigation and that Leonardo DiCaprio is expected to play the detective. The project, which was packaged by CAA, is currently being shopped around to the studios with a script written by John Logan.

The film will take place in the 1930s on the MGM lot and will apparently feature cameos from people like Judy Garland and Bugsy Siegel (people playing them, anyway). The plot will likely follow the detective as he is hired by the studio to clean up a scandal involving a starlet who may or may not have murdered her husband. The only other part of the script that has been revealed is that there will be a major shootout that takes place in the Trocadero nightclub on Sunset Boulevard. Despite the fact that no studio is yet confirmed (New Line has been revealed to have bid, but too low), the film will start shooting in February.

There can never be too many period noirs set in Hollywood, which had a lot of interesting scandals during the golden era, but after the failure of The Black Dahlia some studios may be hesitant to think there's a chance for another L.A. Confidential. Still, with Mann, DiCaprio and Logan teamed up -- they all worked together on The Aviator, which Mann produced -- it will be difficult to lose with this film.

At the fantasy movie studio where I control everything, one of my favorite authors from which to adapt material would be James Ellroy. I would send my minions out to acquire every piece of Ellroy's fiction that I could possibly get my hands on. His novels, including The Black Dahlia and the exceptional LA Confidential, are quintessential tales of Los Angeles that reveal the seedy underbelly of a city dedicated to illusion. Plus, they're truly great reads.

And, if I got to pick a hot director to bring one of Ellroy's novels to the screen for my studio, I can't think of anyone better suited for the job than Joe Carnahan, who so aptly demonstrated his abilities with the terrific in-your-face film Narc and his exceptional debut Blood, Guns Bullets and Octane. Well, it looks like I don't have to imagine any of this because according to an article over at CHUD, it's really going to happen.

After Carnahan puts the finishing touches on his upcoming film Smokin' Aces, featuring Ben Affleck and Ray Liotta, he will next turn his attention to James Ellroy's novel White Jazz. "The film I'm doing next is White Jazz,'the sequel to L.A. Confidential. My brother and I wrote the adaptation. That script is one of my favorites," said Carnahan in the article.

No word yet on a start date for White Jazz or on potential casting. Although Carnahan did say in the article that he has someone already involved in White Jazz that will "blow us away," but he wouldn't say who. OK Joe, I'll trust you because you sure look like you know what you're doing. However, if you were doing this project for my studio, I would push for an LA Confidential cast reunion re-teaming Russell Crowe (as vice cop Dave Klein) and Guy Pierce along with one of your favorite actors -- Ray Liotta. Now that's a cast, combined with your directing skills, that would make this film worth seeing when it hits theaters.

What do you guys think? Will White Jazz kick ass like Narc did?

After James Ellroy's raves about the film version of his novel The Black Dahlia, the writer's fans allowed themselves a bit of optimism about the Brian De Palma-directed adaptation. Now, though, six lucky viewers who attended an early screening in Sherman Oaks this week have shared their impressions of the film with AICN, and they range from total disgust ("Josh Hartnett shouldn't be paid to carry luggage, let alone a movie.") to breathless praise ("it was one of those moments where I felt pure love & respect for this director.").

I've been looking forward to this movie forever and am still clinging to my hope, despite the few incredibly harsh write-ups. One of the reviewers who liked the film mentioned that, based on a focus group he attended after the screening, many of his fellow audience members just "didn't get it." While that's certainly not encouraging, his subsequent suggestion that the film (in this early stage) was "missed" because of its uncompromising complexity and reliance on noir conventions certainly is. After all, those are the best things about the screen version of L.A. Confidential, and De Palma could certainly do worse than walking in that film's footsteps.

In 1979, James Ellroy wrote an incredibly intense novel based on a brutal murder that took place in LA in 1947; the book was also heavily influenced by the unsolved murder of Ellroy's own mother when he was child. The 1947 killer was also never caught.

For the past nine months, Brian De Palma has been working on a film version of Ellroy's work (called The Black Dahlia, after the nickname the press gave the victim) that stars Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart and, since it's apparently now illegal to make a movie without her, Scarlett Johansson. And, according to informal statements by Ellory this week, De Palma has finished shooting and the film is ready to be edited; there is even a chance it will be ready in time for a Cannes premiere in May. In addition, though Ellroy was initially very unhappy with the movie, he has now come around. Not only did he describe (with typical grace) the three hours of dailies he saw as "fucking gorgeous" and the compositions as "amazing," but he also made a rather bold statement about the film as whole: "the big story coming out of this is...Hartnett, who is a revelation." Whoa.

This is great news for Ellroy fans - his books are outrageously complex, and the task of translating them to the big screen must be unimaginably difficult. (L.A. Confidential is so brilliant partially because of how seamlessly it cut and changed the book, without sacrificing quality or credibility.) It sounds like De Palma and writer Josh Friedman just may have done it - after all, if Ellroy didn't like what he'd seen, he certainly wouldn't be shy about.

[via GreenCine Daily]