I kind of put 2003 right in the middle of the great CGI assault on cinema. We saw the 21’st century in with a different kind of action movie, a kind that many would agree would never live up to their practical stunts/effects clad counterparts of the 70’s and the 80’s. Writing now in 2011, this flick is 8 years old and we may be now living in a time where over used CGI is being noticed by so many people all at various levels of film fan-ism. The days of flash editing and Computer graphics are not and will never be behind us, I just think that film making teams are slowly figuring out how to use certain techniques to enhance a film without it being so focally evident that it is being relied upon 100% for creating all the action scenes in a movie. Subtlety vs. Practicality. But fast editing will probably always be used to cover up badly designed, performed & choreographed action.In the midst of superhero movie dominance, solid “meat and two veg” actioners could be considered rare in 03, and I was actually slightly surprised by how much I enjoyed S.W.A.T. It was visually coherent, simple in plot, the performances were good enough, the movie did actually attempt to build characters and relationships between a group of characters, but with all that said there wasn’t enough depth. Their backgrounds and life stories were addressed by stating “so you were a Navy Seal” “yeah” “What did you do in the Seals” –no response.
Based on a 1970’s TV show, this flick is directed by Clark Johnson, mainly a TV director who has directed episodes of The Wire & The Shield. Colin Farrel plays Jim Street an ex Navy Seal now working in S.W.A.T (Special Weapons And Tactics) for the LAPD. Partnered with a hot headed Jeremy Renner, the pair finds themselves in the captain’s office being reprimanded for Renner shooting a hostage during the film’s opening hostage situation. They get kicked off S.W.A.T, but with a little sympathy from a senior officer are given a job working in the cage, which is basically the place where they take care of all the S.W.A.T munitions, guns, general maintenance, things like that including polishing boots. The captain calls Farrel back into his office after Renner has just attacked him over his desk and offers Farrell an ultimatum. He can stay on S.W.A.T if he Rats Renner out based on his actions in the hostage situation. But he doesn’t, he takes the flack.
6 months pass, I know this as we are given a good old “6 months later” message. And Farrel is still busting his balls in the cage. So Sam Jackson (Samuel L Jackson) as Sergeant Hondo shows up at the cage with his rifle that needs maintenance, shares some words with Farrell and you know where this is going. Hondo is a S.W.A.T veteran who returns to the LAPD to select and operate his own S.W.A.T team. He takes a liking to Farrel and asks him to drive him around town whilst he searches for the people he wants on his team. Naturally Farrell ends up on his team after doubting the captain would ever let him return to S.W.A.T. Also a team member is Chris Sanchez. Sounds like a guy right? No, it’s Michelle Rodriguez. I watched this on my own and I got to be honest I burst out laughing at the characters thinking Chris Sanchez was a guy, and finding out it was Michelle Rodriguez. She plays exactly the same character here as she plays in Fast and the Furious, Avatar, Machete, Battle LA. The Woman who’s just as tough as the guys, maybe doubted from time to time due to her gender, but what else can a studio do to give something back to the female audience of a male actor dominated testosterone filled action movie than cast Michelle Rodriguez in the “girl power” role. I’m not saying she’s a bad actress, to be honest I don’t have much of an opinion on the matter.
The big thing here, is that the movie doesn’t really get into the pitch for at least an hour, the team gets put together, proves themselves to the superiors, goes through more training, and out onto the streets into action. This is all pretty enjoyable, but I knew the point was coming where when we get into it. So what is the pitch – An LAPD S.W.A.T Team tries to prevent an arms dealer from being broken out of police custody after he offers a $100million reward to anyone that can do so.
It must be close the 3rd act when we actually get into this, and I wouldn’t say for a second I was bored with the build up, it was all pretty well paced with enough going on to keep me interested. We are actually introduced to the Arms Dealer Alex Montel (Olivier Martinez) earlier in the movie when he flies in to LAX, clears customs, makes his way through town, and goes and slices some bad dude’s throat in a bar. For my part, I thought this was just weak the way this was set up, I found it far too contrived that even the media would be so fucking dumb as to advertise to all the criminals of the US that they can earn the biggest pay day of their lives if they can break this guy free of police custody. So Montel gets pulled for having a tail light out, he tells the cops it’s his uncle’s car, they check this out and find there is a warrant out for his uncle’s arrest so they have to detain him. It’s only when they figure out that his finger prints don’t match up that they have a guy who’s on the worlds high priority wanted list. A question I asked myself just before it happened, how the hell is this guy going to announce to the entire country that he will pay 100million dollars to anyone who can break him out of custody. Well, he just screams it at the news cameras which show up after it becomes public knowledge that this guy (who is a big time criminal) has been caught. So the dumb ass media broadcast this ‘offer’ on TV, and we see intercut with this, shots of various gangs and bad ass looking people watching the broadcast with fucking dollar signs in their eyes. And then, the media basically says, oh this guy is the king pin of a huge arms dealing ring and he’s defiantly good for it, they even mention his fortune in monetary terms, so any of you guys that want to give this rescue a go, just bring it on. Complete and utter bullshit, but in reality, our reality as the viewer, it is of course a good reason to bring the S.W.A.T team into action.
I really think the character building and “team building” at the beginning could have contained less smart ass dialogue and been more to the point. There is a lot of dialogue in this movie that is pointless in terms of driving the plot forward. They could have actually focused this more on a series of “heists” and how the team deals with them. And Montels’ “offer” could’ve been communicated to the masses without making it look like fucking advertising.
Spoiler – Jeremy Renner shows back up. To be honest I didn’t see this coming, it was actually a nice idea as far as making things more difficult for the team to deal with, S.W.A.T chasing S.W.A.T. One of the guys on Hondo’s team defects and joins Renner, breaking Montel out of Custody. What the hell is wrong with these people, they seem to think about money and forget about life, these are people who work in, or who have previously worked in law enforcement, they should know by now that most criminals get caught, especially when the police know who you are. But the $100million lure is so damn powerful that they forget about their super fucking slim chance of actually getting away with it, instead they basically throw their lives away.
Back to my beginning paragraph, for 2003, this is a pretty coherent straight forward action flick; the action was cool, nicely cut and designed pretty much all gun fights. The only real major CGI shot was of a Lear jet landing on a bridge at the end and it actually worked quite well, like I was saying, a good use of CGI, as pulling this off in real life would probably be a little dangerous. I liked Farrel and Jackson just enough, but the cheesy pointless dialogue and the dumb ass plotting left me thinking they could have really improved this movie, given it more thought and time, possibly making something much more memorable.
