“By the Book Update of 70’s Police Drama”

S.W.A.T. is an acronym that stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. S.W.A.T. is also the name of a short-lived television series that ran during the 1975-1976 season and starred Steve Forrest and Robert Urich. The new S.W.A.T. movie has barrowed many of the names and archetypes from the original show, but has wisely transported the setting forward several decades and given the story an appropriately edgier tone.

In some respects, S.W.A.T. is little more than a glorified TV show with big-name actors, and this should come as no surprise since the movie’s director, Clark Johnson, is best known for his work on small screen hits like Homicide: Life on the Street and The Shield. Even though the movie closely resembles a standard police procedural, it’s still considerably better than it would have been had the producers committed the cinematic crime of adopting the style and milieu of the TV series: 70’s crime dramas were notorious for depicting police officers merely as caricatures of real cops, as virtual superheroes who were impervious to error, corruption or bullets.

Here, thankfully, the characters are a little more three-dimensional, if a little doughy in the middle. Samuel L. Jackson portrays hard-nosed Sgt. Dan “Hondo” Harrelson and Colin Ferrell plays debased officer, Jim Street, a man who desperately strives to earn Harrelson’s acceptance and thereby find redemption for a past mistake that has tarnished his record and reputation. In the Sydney Bristow era, it’s become a prerequisite for an action movie to feature at least one gorgeous, butt-kicking chica, and in S.W.A.T. we have Michelle Rodriguez (The Fast and the Furious), who embodies the tough-as-nails officer, Chris Sanchez. Rounding out the cast is LL Cool J as Deacon “Deke” Kay and Olivier Martinez as French baddie, Alex Montel, a loathsome tycoon who offers a $100 million reward to anyone who breaks him out of prison.

Most of the movie’s action scenes are similar those you’d see on primetime TV with one major exception…the heart-stopping sequence where Montel’s plane crash-lands on a four lane bridge and bullets start flying like snowflakes in a blizzard. Though I had hoped to see more scenes of this caliber throughout the movie, this pulse pounding sequence is, by itself, worth the price of admission. All things considered, S.W.A.T. is an admirable attempt at graduating a TV series to the big screen and features gritty realism, believable characters and a sobering reminder of how law enforcement officers all-too-frequently pay the price for our enduring security and freedom.

Rating: 2 1/2

Tags: Action, Crime, Thriller