Review
SWAT
Starring Colin Farrell, Samuel L. Jackson, Michelle Rodriguez, and LL Cool J
Directed by Clark Johnson
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SWAT, based on a TV show from the 1970s that I was too young to care about at the time, brings together solid action, passable dialogue and an easy to swallow plotline. On a hot summer night, combined with air conditioning, it’s almost worth the price of admission.
The main plot is simple: ex-SWAT guy Jim Street (Colin Farrell), obligatory girl Chris Sanchez (Michelle Rodriguez) and some other cops are recruited to L.A.’s elite SWAT team, led by veteran Hondo (Samuel L. Jackson). They train hard to please the police chief, who deeply hates Street and Hondo on a personal level. Then a French crime kingpin comes to town, kills people, gets everyone else mad, gets caught and offers $100 million to anyone who can free him from police custody. From early on it’s pretty obvious that everyone will be tempted by the $100 million and one of the cops will turn on the others, but it’s still fun to watch them go through the motions.
The biggest fault with SWAT may be that it takes forever for Team Hondo to actually get to the point – fighting the bad guys. The film doesn’t drag during the training, but only half the film is spent trying to get the kingpin (Olivier Martinez) to a maximum-security prison before the ravenous mobs of armed entrepreneurs free him. The balance of time not spent battling the bad guy or training is fairly well spent building the relationships between the SWAT members. Just remember that I’m talking about connections between stock characters in an action film, rather than any sort of tear-jerking emotional bond. There’s a nice, simple dynamic between all the characters in SWAT. The writer realizes that, although this is an action film, there’s a little time for character development… but not too much.
SWAT’s dialogue is surprisingly palatable, too. Cop-film lines often try far too hard (and fail) to be witty, but SWAT’s actors probably breathed a sigh of relief after reading the script. They’re never forced to blurt out absurd catch-phrases or unrealistic sentimental crap. For the most part, they use the level-headed, non-flashy dialogue in a way that nature intended: to advance the plot alongside the realistic action.
Both Farrell and Jackson make passable performances as trainee and mentor respectively, while Mr. Cool J is too peripheral to pass judgment on. It’s not that he was bad in the film, but he seems to be getting top billing in all the film’s publicity when he could have been easily written out.
One final quip – who picks a French guy to be an evil crime boss? Eek! It’s the French! As if. |
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