Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
'S.W.A.T.' resembles every other police-action movie
Colin Farrell and Samuel L. Jackson in 'S.W.A.T.'
Merrick Morton/ Columbia Pictures
The cast of 'S.W.A.T.'
Merrick Morton/ Columbia Pictures
Director: Clark Johnson.
Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Olivier Martinez.
MPAA rating: PG-13 for violence, language and sexual references.
Ma-n-n-ny times. The titles change, but the demographically balanced team looks the same. We'll take one of these and one of those and that there Colin Farrell lookalike.
Oh, it is Colin Farrell. Wow, it's his sixth starring role in a year and a half, and a seventh is on its way.
"S.W.A.T." might be named for the short-lived 1975-76 TV series with Steve Forrest and Robert Urich, in which all of the leading characters were Vietnam veterans.
The film might even name a few of its characters for those in the series.
But the "S.W.A.T." movie arrives with its head tucked firmly in every other extravagantly over-produced police and government agent picture of the past 15 years.
Each part falls into place so dutifully you can draw up a checklist at home and take it along, marking off the inevitable components scene by scene:
Begin with the disenfranchisement of the hero's friend and move on to the recruitment of the squad, begin the mission that inevitably will go awry, spot the traitor among the home team, allow the treacherous villain to escape, begin the anticlimaxes early, stage them often and have lots and lots and lots of shooting, wrecking and exploding.
Los Angeles S.W.A.T. team officers Jim Street (Farrell in Urich's old role) and hothead Brian "Poker" Gamble (Jeremy Renner) quarrel after the opening sequence when Poker is nailed for winging a female hostage.
Capt. Tom Fuller (Larry Poindexter), representing every bureaucratic pain since Dirty Harry Callahan started cleaning up San Francisco, calls in renegade Lt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson, (Forrest's TV role) to recruit and train a new quintet of S.W.A.T. members.
Among the chosen are Jim, T.J. McCabe (Josh Charles) and the now inevitable female teammate, Chris Rodriguez (Michelle Sanchez).
Somewhere along the way, though, we've lost Hondo's family -- casualties of today's go-go-go scenarios -- as well as every humanizing and distinguishing aspect of the characters.
Whatever happened to the vulnerable officers in pictures such as "The New Centurions" who mattered all the more because they breathed and perspired and didn't necessarily reach the end of the movie?
Our S.W.A.T. team is charged with assorted responsibilities involving a scum-of-the-earth Frenchman named Alex Montel (Olivier Martinez), who, when arrested, offers a TV sound bite promising $100 million to whoever springs him.
Clearly the lunatics who go for the bounty, and they seem to be legion, haven't seen enough of the movies to which screenwriters David Ayers and David McKenna seem so faithful here.
"S.W.A.T." unquestionably plays with visceral punch, but it's all junked up with sound effects and dreadful ear poison designed to sell CD soundtracks. Clark Johnson, directing his first feature film after many TV shows, does what all of his contemporaries do: Count on rescue in the editing room, where an action music video can be designed instead of a solidly constructed picture.
Johnson and cinematographer Tim Southcott shoot so much so sloppily and haphazardly, there's seldom an orienting overview to provide perspective.
The photography is too restless to observe a single frame of revealing behavior.
And when did L.A. become so under-populated? Recent history tells us that the whole town is running around with video cameras trying to film police brutality, but in "S.W.A.T." the good guys and the bad guys level the city and hardly anyone is around to notice.
"S.W.A.T." will talk the talk at the box office because it delivers the same old goods. It's a mail-order movie that all but announces "To be continued."
