Alright, just tossing this out there. You want something dark and gritty, but at the same time modern. I have two alternative ideas that I prefer a lot.

a) an earlier era, such as the depression or possibly post-depression. We could also lead into that with war years/roaring 20's.

b) a still earlier, but not 'as' early - 80's/90's era.

The benefits to these, generally, are that I can use pre-existing events, people, etc. instead of being like "It's 2014, let me predict the god damned future" - basically, it secures a sense of realism. I offer an even earlier one because we have a LOT of historic documentation and events that go that far back, so we have a lot to work with from dates, events, etc. We can make a world more "realistic" because we knew more about it. Alternatively, if you guys aren't up for something 'that' far back, if we make it into the 80's and 90's, we can at least give some suspension of disbelief to advanced tech that's not cyberpunk level, as to give a James Bond feel to some characters. Basically, by going a bit back, we allow for a lot more room to work with and a stronger setting, imo. We can deal with those big, gritty moral issues as they were seen back then more objectively.