Bang! Ka-pow! I kept expecting to see balloon captions appear above Colin Farrell’s head each time he got into a fistfight, the sound effects of his punches landing were so loud. I’m still unsold on Farrell as (one of) the next big Hollywood stars, even if he does insist on acting like that’s already a done deal, but he does show up as well as anyone else here except perhaps LL Cool J.
S.W.A.T. the movie claims to be inspired by S.W.A.T. the ’70s TV series but honestly I don’t remember the series well enough to compare–though the character names were retained. And the cool theme music got some very headbanging updates, including a version with lyrics that played over the closing credits.
Olivier Martinez and Jeremy Renner play the primary bad guys, both very cool cucumbers. I especially liked their stonecold reactions as they waited for a small jet to land on the 6th Street Bridge during their getaway. Martinez, of course, came to notice last fall by seducing Diane Lane in Unfaithful and more recently in Showtime’s production of Tennessee William’s The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Samuel Jackson plays the one name only Sgt. Hondo but I missed his usual energy here.
Clark Johnson, who I first noticed when he was Meldrick Lewis on the classic TV series Homicide: Life on the Streets, makes the directing leap from small screen to big screen with S.W.A.T.. He did some excellent work on TV, directing the pilots/first episodes of both The Shield and The Wire. I think he has a great future if he sticks to strong scripts.
Recommended
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