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S.W.A.T. (Widescreen Special Edition)

S.W.A.T. (Widescreen Special Edition)

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: One of the worst movies ever.
Review: I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to blockbuster summer movies. I don't expect the greatest scripts or characters or plot, I just want to be entertained. SWAT let me down on all accounts and was practically begging for me to see its many flaws.

The movie is good at the beginning, though. It opens with bank robbers taking hostages and the SWAT team moving in and taking out the robbers one by one. Colin Ferrel's character disobeys orders but turns on his partner in order to stay on the SWAT team. Then the movie begins and that's when it breaks down.

Samuel L Jackson arrives on the scene as a supposed ex-SWAT member who is brought back to restore dignity to the LAPD. All this is covered in one line uttered by Jackson's superior, who happens to hate him and hopes he fails. I have no clue why a separate SWAT team was needed to be formed when the regular SWAT team seemed to be functioning quite well.

Jackson is allowed to choose his own team and much is made in the movie of him choosing each member. Jackson's superior warns that if Jackson picks the wrong team, it'll end his career.

The middle of the movie involves the training of the team. On the way home from training, they stumble on a worldwide fugitive. Through a forced and unbelievable plot, it becomes Jackson's young, inexperienced SWAT team's responsibility to transport the prisoner. Here's where I started having doubts.

The extended climax of the movie involves Jackson, Ferrell, Michelle Rodriquez and LL Cool J trying to transport the prisoner while all types of thugs try to break him free.

There is a plot twist at the end where Jackson's team choosing ability is called into question, yet this has no repercussions in the movie, and it also calls into doubt the entire first half of the film when Jackson carefully chose his team. How bad could he be?

Why is this young inexperienced SWAT team in charge of the prison transfer. Is that what SWAT teams really do. I didn't think so.

The final fight between Ferrell and the last bad guy is horribly filmed in the darkness of a train yard. One minute the characters are in the open, the next they are on a train car. The editing is jumpy and confusing, and I didn't really care what happened.

When I think of SWAT, I think of the beginning of the movie when they save hostages from a terrorist situation with their long-range shooting and special skill. The entire climax of the movie is about cops transporting a prisoner, certainly not worthy of a SWAT team. This is a bad movie with no character development. Don't buy it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An ok action movie....
Review: I was kind of disappointed with SWAT but not to disappointed. I mean the movie didn't really get started until the end. Some movies can pull this off with leaving the audience wanting more, but unfortunately SWAT wasn't one of them. Jackson did a really good job in the movie and so did all the actors but where there's no plot there's no movie.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Highly entertaining action with great cast
Review: SWAT is a good movie full of plenty of action that benefits from a pretty good cast. After a hostage situation goes wrong, Jim Street is pulled from his SWAT team and must work in the "cage." When a new team needs to be formed by a sergeant coming out of retirement, Street is one of those picked. The new crack team must train together and learn all about the job. Problems arise when drug dealer and general lowlife Alex Montel is apprehended and offers $100 million to whoever can get him out. This brings anyone in Los Angeles who can wield a gun to try and get him out. The new SWAT team must figure out a way to transport him to maximum security. This is a full-blown action movie that will keep you riveted. The scene with a plane landing on the Sixth Street Bridge, while obviously CGI, is a great example of the action.

Colin Farrell stars as Jim Street, the cocky SWAT officer who works his way back onto the team. This is basically the same role as in The Recruit. Samuel L. Jackson is very good as Sergeant Hondo who is brought out of retirement to train and lead this new SWAT team. Olivier Martinez sneers his way through as Alex Montel. The rest of the SWAT team includes LL Cool J, Michelle Rodriguez, Josh Charles, and Brian Van Holt. The Special Edition DVD offers several commentaries, four featurettes, a gag reel, deleted scenes, widescreen presentation, and a mini documentary about the SWAT equipment with demos. For a highly entertaining action movie with a pretty good cast, check out S.W.A.T.!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally a cop movie John McClane can enjoy
Review: S.W.A.T. is a throwback to all those cop movies from the 70s and 80s when cops did all they could to stop the bad guys, if it meant bending the rules, they did it. The good guys from S.W.A.T. stopped the bad guys in the most over-the-top way possible. That's a good thing!

Since gritty realism is now the common feature of modern cop movies, it is refreshing to see a cop movie go back to basics to show comicbook heroes and heroines as well as over the top villians.

S.W.A.T. features the hokiest villian since Bennett from that great Schwarzenegger flick "Commando".

The DVD features some what should be standard commentaries and deleted scenes, as well as a "making of" featurette which is nothing more than a back slapping exercise from those involved.

That said the DVD is worth getting as the film transfer is crisp and clear and the soundtrack sensational.

Now if they could only make the gun fire sound like real gun fire....

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Let-Down of the Year...
Review: By the looks of the tv spots and trailers I thought this movie was going to be better than Training Day, but I was wrong. This is a pathetic excuse for a movie. It has decent action, horrible acting, virtually no plot, and the ending is a disaster.

This movie is about a SWAT Team member (Colin Farell) who gets kicked off of his SWAT team only to be put back on another SWAT Team led by Samuel L. Jackson. As luck would have it as soon as the team is assembled a terrorist escapes from prison and they drag on for about an hour before they kill him in the end.

Special Features include Audio Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Theatrical Trailer, Gag Reel and Five Featurettes.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Oh please no more...make it stop....
Review: .
.
Even the cops dial 911.really..maybe i should dial it and ask for free medicare to get me over the shock...

Ok, i like these types of movies...i really do, in fact, most of my collection is a series of Terminator, predator,alien,SPR,LOTR kinda films and one that amazon kindy shows in its recommendations just how weird a collection i have. i love to settle down to a mindless blaster movie, one that cancels the noise of the world...you know the ones where you go 'jeeze was that 2 hours' or lets go back to that chapter..

OK, here is the bad news -- this film is so bad, so terrible, so embarrasingly awful...you cant ignore it-- it just would not end. Infact my therapist told me to write this review so i could get rid of it!!!ok thats a joke but you get the drift.

I bought the DVD, thinking with a class of actors like this i cant fail. Wrong, this is the type of movie when watched in a cinema makes you wonder whether the ceiling tiles are black or just painted black or how high is that? or other important questions in a cinema like why is this seat stopping blood going to my legs? you get the message...anything other then the film. Dont get me wrong, I mean i can ignore the glaring errors in films, i had no issue with Terminator3 (armed people get into top secret military base to warn daddy not to turn the machine on)and love them for it all, i can ignore almost anything...but please spare me from this. it has nothing to redeem it. It starts off well enough, people introduced, the usual...but suddenly spirals into nowhere. i mean who is the french actor. PLEASE, make wine, cheese, bread anything other then act!!.where did you find this guy? As if America did not have enough issues with the french...this guy is presented as a sample of good french acting.

as for Samuel... i thought id never see a film with this man in it i did not like and buy. This man is a God among actors..cmon, he is excellent, a master of the art (certainly wasnt in the same trailer giving tips during the filming to the french guy thats for sure) BUT not in this film...what the hell is he doing in this movie. i got the distinct impression he wanted out half way thru..and it showed. There is loads of now dated only a black man understand a black man, my brover, type of discussions and serious knuckly touching, deep looks with his other swat buddy, friend whatever. OK, can we move to the 21st century PLEASE!!!! Farell is doing his best but then im Irish and would say that, but again he was obviously with Britney at the time because this is all surface and no detail. I would not be a big farrell supporter but to be fair his accent (well to me anyway held out) The angry lady is well,(Michelle Rodriguez, i think - sorry about the spelling) angry but she does smile in this and she plays her part with a bit of grace and style. LL is the only suprise for me acting wise i was very impressed, he had a good mix of serious and humour...

but to the fim...if you want to save your hard earned money...dont get this....no plot, no story, no acting, remember even Studios dial 911 and the certainly should have with this film....still that just my opinion...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I don't get it!!
Review: I am a SWAT fan from the TV show, and I was excited to see the movie. I thought the movie was OK, but was definitely lacking in action. I am reading the reviews and I see comments like "Staggering Action," "Best Action Movie Ever!!," etc. It was a good movie, but had nowhere near enough action. Apart from the plane landing and the opening shoot-out, there was not much else. There was a lot of training and all, but that is not really action. I also like Colin Farrell, but they could have used a cardboard cutout in his place in this movie.

I liked the movie enough to see it in the theater and buy the DVD. It is a good movie, but no way can you call this a "great action" film. It would have been a great movie if there was more action rather than one or two highly paced scenes. I am not sure what movie these other people have seen.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Action packed......great cast!
Review: This is a good movie. The action is incredible and pretty constant. There isn't one boring moment in this movie it keeps you interested the whole way through. The cast is tight. Sam Jackson, colin farrell,Michelle Rodriguez ,( a beefed up and looking damn good at 40) LL Cool J , Jermey Renner. This movie is a must for action movie fans.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A better-than-expected "escape" movie
Review: "S.W.A.T" is a surprisingly standard cop flick, a throwback to a calmer if not recent cinematic era. It is still stuffed full of guns, villains and mayhem, but unlike "Bad Boys II," or even the excellent "Training Day," the movie does not paint an urban world teetering on the brink - criminal masterminds run amok, but Los Angeles isn't quite burning. It seems bizarre to consider "S.W.A.T" comforting, but it is.

Colin Farrell is Jim, a former S.W.A.T member relegated to scrub duty after he and his rogue partner, Brian (Jeremy Renner), break protocol in a hostage negotiation. Sam Jackson is, yes, Hondo, chief of a newly formed crew that resurrects Jim's career from the gun cage. LL Cool J and Michelle Rodriguez play Jim's buds, while Josh Charles, the do-good cop, is Jim's main shooting rival on the crew. Director Clark Johnson charts the crew's training - it amounts to a recruiting poster, set to a video game soundtrack - a circle changeup, of sorts, to the usual hit-the-ground-gunning structure of most modern cop films.

The crew eventually is dispatched to handle the prison transfer of a Eurotrash crime boss (Olivier Martinez) who brags, in the movie's most quotable line, that he will offer "one hundred meellion dollars!" to any brave crook willing to bust him free. Half the city's loose cannons are up for it, including Brian, now off the force, who has a connection inside Hondo's crew. In a twist, Martinez's character is not a supervillain of limitless cunning and strength, but an ineffectual, well-funded heel, pout-lipped and soft-bellied as Brian escorts him through sewers to the rendezvous: a private jet waiting on an LA bridge.

Renner was unknown to me, but his few scenes with Farrell crackle with energy. The face of an insolent cherub, he makes for an appropriately smug sellout. Jackson, for once, is the calming influence collecting a paycheck, and "S.W.A.T" is better off without his bravado. And while Farrell has not yet proven his acting chops - we'll have to wait for Oliver Stone's "Alexander" - there is an offhand, understood masculinity that recalls a young Mickey Rourke, or Sean Penn. Only Rodriguez, notching another asexual sidekick role to her club, is a bust.

Cynics might call "S.W.A.T" inconsequential in that relives the climax from "Die Hard 2" and generally avoids the graceless, graphic violence of its 2003 competitor "Bad Boys II." I far preferred it; unoriginal as the movie is, "S.W.A.T" is the very idea of escapist entertainment without the sideline helping of head wounds and nihilism. Action junkies should eat it up.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Is it a corporate training video or an action flick?
Review: The DVD cover and back say: "Best cop film since 'Training Day'" and "A solid action movie with a lot of heart and soul". EEEHHHH!! Wrong!! What the heck does "heart and soul" mean in the context of this whoooosh-boom-ratata kind of movie?

This film is like Top Gun, except without the class of Tony Scott as director. Let's see, the first hour of the movie is almost exclusively a corporate training video for potential SWAT recruits. There were obviously lots of ex-SWATers on hand to ensure authenticity. So after the hour is over, we learn there are bad egg members of SWAT too. Wow. Like the first 10 minutes didn't already spoil that. The film moves along at an OK pace from then on, but it's too-little-too-late to engross us anymore, because we look at the DVD running time and realise, well it's time to wrap this baby up soon, so you can rattle off all your predictions on what will happen.

But here's why I felt like I was watching some promotional how-to video as opposed to an action flick: The score (music), lighting, and camera work that accompany some of the training scenes are way too pretentious and obvious to captivate the viewer. Within seconds you start to ask yourself, why am I supposed to feel the suspense, when the characters in this movie are all just training with paint guns? It's just silly. This is an example of a movie that puts to much effort into honestly portraying the training of a member of a SWAT team and not enough into, hey, it's an action flick!! You've got Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, LL Cool J, and Michelle Rodriguez (who is becoming a B-movie actress thanks to not challenging herself to do more gritty work like her 'Girlfight' debut), and Olivier Martinez. Let the viewers have some fun. We're the ones who pay for this shlock.

Let me put it like this: If I decide to make a documentary about baking my homemade christmas cookies, perhaps I can move and rivet the viewer with all the meticulous detailed work and effort involved in shaping and baking the cookies. But if this is a movie to be consumed (pun intended) by the mass audience, then I'll have to figure out how to make it entertaining. So if S.W.A.T. is supposed to be a documentary or training video, well hey, mission accomplished. But we're making an action movie, right? That's based on a TV series, which had a plot occasionally too, right?

The DVD: I actually liked the deleted scenes. They added some sorely lacking humour as well as some of that "heart and soul" that would have given the characters zest. As for the commentaries, I am of the opinion that the director's commentary and that of the actors should have been on separate tracks, because not only were they recorded separately, but their moods are totally conflicting. Johnson's comments are low-key details and thoughts, and the actors are boisterous. Weird to listen to. The 'making of' was just plain annoying; I couldn't hear what anyone was saying, because the dumb music was given priority over the comments.

In closing: If Tony Scott had directed this, it would have been R-rated, and may have not made as much money at the theaters. But he would have lent the movie the authenticity that the producers wanted without alienating the viewers who came to see some good old fashioned action.

Rent it first. If you like it, ignore my comments and buy it.


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