Despite some of it's cliches and some rather thin plotting, I kind of feel that this is what a summer movie is all about, fun characters, fun action, just enough plot to get the scene motoring from point A to point Z and just enough 'witty' dialogue so that you're not groaning at it.

S.W.A.T. is an old style cop flick. There are no over the top, death defying, in your face stunts. In fact, compared to such outings as Bad Boys 2 this is a more realistic and muted film which is ten ten times more enjoyable. The cops make mistakes, one shoots a hostage. The bad guy gets busted for a burned out tail light of all things (though I myself drove around for a month and a half with one once and no one said a word). When you expect a big car chase to take place, it ends up ina block pursuit with a car accident.

While more 'realistic' cop events are taking place, as it is S.W.A.T. the team does have to deal with something bigger than your average dope peddler on the corner. Enter Oliver Martinez (from Unfaithful) as the international playboy/drug lord/terrorist Alex Montel. When he makes an offer to anyone freeing him for $100 million dollars you know the S.W.A.T. team is going to have a lot of looney's out there to deal with during their prison transfer.

The funny thing is, that 'plot' point takes place around the half way mark of the film, the rest of the time we have been watching Jim Street (Farrell) deal with his demotion from a hostage situation gone wrong, we have watched the S.W.A.T. team be assembled, the training and even more quiet moments such as Street's girlfriend leaving him, Sanchez (Rodriguez) having a birthday party for her daughter, Hondo (Jackson) fitting in a moment for golf and Deke (L L Cool J) with his family grocery shopping. These are great little asides, showing the cops outside of their work environment, but they do become a bit heavy when sanchez and Deke begin pulling out pix mere moments after an action scene towards the end, these previous moments should have been enough to drill in the concept of law enforcement and possible lives lost.

One odd occurence though that has come to me as I think back on the flick. Ok, so...S.W.A.T. was a T.V. show. That's nice. So they make a big screen movie out of it and show a clip from the original T.V. program, have the characters singing the theme song as well and even feature a cameo from Steve Forrest driving a S.W.A.T. truck. Ok, so here the movie acknowledges that this T.V. show existed. But Farrell and Jackson play Jim Street and Lt. Hondo Harrelson respectively, characters from the show itself...doesn't anyone think it a bit of an odd coincidence that Hondo and Street are back on S.W.A.T.? Just me thinking out loud.

Directed by Clark Johnston, a veteran actor of such shows as Homicide as well as having directed shows like The Shield and Third Watch he (along with the writers David Ayer and David McKenna have crafted a solid, fun flick that doesn't require huge amounts of wire work or insane cgi effects to tell an action packed flick. I'm not saying this is a French Connection or Narc style cop movie, but when it comes to be being a summer cop flick, this one knows how to be entertaining. S.W.A.T. currently makes my top ten list for the summer of 2003 so far, clocking in around the 6 or 7 level.

The final score 4 stars out of 5.

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Copyright© Written By: Rob Paul
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