2.4 Mediocre

Yeah, it was just ok...

By The Critic
unrivaled.info

Swat was a movie quietly made under the radar. It was a project that began in 1999 and was originally intended to star to Arnold Schwarzenegger with the SWAT team members around his age. He eventually left the project, prompting the studio to change the projected cast as a young group. In 2002, Columbia Pictures then signed on Samuel Jackson and Collin Farrell to star in this remake of the 1975 TV series of the same name. The movie wasn’t promoted until early this year, so the hype revolving around the flick was subdued. Knowing this movie was based on the old TV series, no one really believed it would deliver. But with an all star cast of Samuel L Jackson (Lt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson), Colin Farrell (Officer Jim Street), LL Cool J (Deke), and Michelle Rodriguez (Chris Sanchez), it’s hard to imagine otherwise.

Swat has a solid structure going for it, but most everything in the movie is just average. With all the star power in the film, you'd think this movie could go the mile, but in the end it just disappoints. Very weak individual character development really hurts the film (especially the main character played by Collin Farrell) and you really don’t care for any of the main cast. Although it did seem they tried to somewhat to develop them. If I take a step back and look at the movie as a whole, it appears to try to be true to the SWAT teams' way of life, being toned downed and a bit realistic. This is a different method used from most other blockbuster movies out this year. But different and toned down does not always mean better.

The good: The chemistry between the main stars is very good even though they didn’t share allot of screen time together. You can tell this group enjoyed working with each other and perhaps the movie called for them to be natural this way. Jackson and Collins do give good performances, but none of it really translates to a better movie. The movie also has a polish feel to it. Most of the cop work emulated in the beginning of the film feels realistic, and does convey what training to be a SWAT team member could feel like. And despite all its flaws it did feel like a big budget movie.

The bad: SWAT suffers from having weak villains. No more do we despise the villain and some of us are actually rooting for them (its not like they are cool or anything, but that’s how average our heroes are). What happened to the good ole days when a villain was a formidable enemy you'd never forget. The average story and plot tanks this movie into mediocrity and the main characters are just plain average. Having an all-star cast didn’t make up for the lack of character development and as I said before, some movie goers where actually rooting for the crappy bad guy to win. That’s just plain bad! Maybe they can work on this in the sequel, I don’t know... despite SWATs polished look, it still feels incredibly average. I can’t put my figure on it, but there is nothing special about it.

• Execution - 2: the story and plot are average at most. Predicable and lifeless with little character development.
• The Stars - 3: having an all-star cast couldn’t save this flick but Jackson, Collins, LL Cool J and Michelle Rodriguez all do solid jobs in their roles with good chemistry. If a sequel was made with a good script and director, it might have potential.
• The cast - 2: this score reflects not on the performance of the supporting cast but on the creation of the villains. This movie was not the only one to have these generic flip-flop of a bad guys this summer, but in this movie's case, it doesn’t help. I won’t say the supporting cast did a bad job, but they didn’t help the movie either.
• Special effects - 3: stunt work and special effects were not bad. I didn’t see much CGI, but when I did notice it, it was pretty bad. It gets a 3 for the stunt work.
• Tilt - 2: it was a bit boring, surprising for a flick with two big stars such as Jackson and Collins.

Unrivaled rating: 2.4

Overall: good chemistry between the stars keeps it interesting and could prove useful for a sequel, but still is not enough to make the flick decent. Wait to rent for it on DVD or watch it on HBO.