Vanity in Peril Reviews: SWAT: Firefight
Sony Pictures- Stage 6 Films
The other night whilst surfing through the over three-hundred channels cable television provides us with, I found myself bored almost completely to death. Not satisfied with my selection of programs at that hour, I decided to pop in a new DVD I had received from my local “Independent AMC movie distributer” (see: bootleg guy). I had never heard of the movie before but I was determined to give it a chance. The movie in question? SWAT: Firefight. Now this movie may just have been at the same time the most amazing and most horrific thing my brown eyes had ever glanced upon. More about my actual opinion of the movie later but first… the rundown.
The movie begins with several outdoor scenes of beautiful, sunny Los Angeles. We are immediately given front seat access to a rap video masquerading as a LA house party. We see the cliché hot girls in bikinis, ubiquitous drug-use and enough rough housing to make the cast of Animal House look like they were pledging to whatever fraternity the guys of Bringham Young University belong to. Things quickly turn from cherry wine to sour grapes when an unexpected and uninvited terrorist thug joins the shin dig threatening to kill everybody there. The party goers are all fine though as the Los Angeles SWAT unit quickly shows up and diffuses the sit’. Now here is the part of the movie where I really should have just turned it off but the thought of sitting in silence with a book was not promising and as we all know reading causes wrinkles, I decided to push forward on my cinematic journey. With the terrorist carrying some heavy hardware and a pretty young blonde thing as his hostage, our SWAT team is forced to take him down the best way they know how… BY BLOWING HIS FREAKING HAND ALMOST COMPLETELY OFF and then proceeding to handcuff (or should that read “stump-cuff”?) the assailant.
It is at this time that we are introduced to our lead character; Paul played by relative newcomer Gabriel Macht. Paul is a decorated war hero and town pretty boy. We are given a few more scenes of our lead enjoying the warm and sunny Cali weather and then he’s off to the doldrums of Detroit to help a new team of coppers get certified in kick ass. While I have never travelled to Detroit, I do listen to a lot of Eminem and my estimate of what it is like to live there lie somewhere between living in a once great ghost-town and living betwixt a bum’s asshole. Paul makes acquaintances with his new team, headed by Inspector Hollander played by Giancarlo Esposito, further proving my point that Esposito will act in absolutely anything.
Exhibit A, anyone?
He also talks up the department’s lead psychologist, played by Carly Pope. We are shown more cliché scenes of Paul butting heads with his new SWAT trainees, Paul making a connection with his new SWAT trainees and Paul making some nookie time for Pope’s character. We are forced to watch what may be one of the most lackluster training sequences ever recorded on celluloid complete with a run through the tire maze and a swing on the monkey bars. Halfway through are team’s sniper school they receive a call of a hostage situation in a nearby office building and the team decides to suit up and take action. After a stunning turn of events it becomes apparent that the team is not dealing with your run of the mill hostage situation. It was also at this time that I realized that none of the original cast members from the first movie showed up for the sequel.
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| T9's looking kinda chunky nowadays, eh? |
After the mission, the movie goes back to being your pretty run of the mill straight to DVD fare. That is until Paul becomes a target. Robert Patrick steps in as Hatch, our bad guy. I would like to say that his presence elevates this movie but that would be a tall tale. He’s only okay. Actually, everybody is only okay. Each role is acted out as if the director’s chose each actor solely for their skill of not conveying the correct emotion on camera… you know… while the damn camera is rolling. At one point in the film, I yelled out “Cut! Let’s do that scene again” but the bastards just kept incorrectly emoting. If at this point you are asking yourself “but why not just turn it off at this point?” please know, just as I was getting up to do that very thing, something happened that one hundred years of AFI great movies could never un-do. Enter…wait for it… Tony Yayo… for no freakin’ reason. I don’t know if this was G-Unit squad member Marvin Tony Yayo Bernard’s first major film role but my hope and prayers are that it is his last. He appears briefly on screen as lead of a bank heist who’s taken hostages. The team is yet again forced to put sniper school on hold so they can quickly dispose of him.
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| He's fine. |
And just as I was deciding that this bad movie may just be deliciously bad, the cast of SWAT decides to take a slow motion saunter towards the camera not once, but TWICE. Again, this happens for absolutely NO REASON. This movie had officially jumped the shark into the land of ridiculousness and I was completely on board. Towards the climactic end of the movie the writers seem to completely throw out the script and just start shooting scenes from various other movies they’ve watched. At one point, Hatch turns into Jigsaw and SWAT becomes a bad Saw send-up, complete with muddied camera filter and horribly contrived dialogue. The movie was rounding the last corner and I had so many unanswered questions. I threw my hands up in disgust. Why didn’t Paul tell the force that Hatch had been making threatening calls from the beginning? Why is it necessary to give Paul a love interest in a movie that literally takes place over the course of four days? Why didn’t I just watch that Glee rerun? Those questions would sadly never be answered as the credits began rolling.
If you are looking for me to tell you to never watch this movie you are looking in the wrong place. Quite to the contrary, I think this may just be the smartest dumb movie ever made. After watching it, my DVD player immediately started playing it again. Unable to come to terms with what I had just seen, I stuck around and rode the ride again. Upon second viewing, this movie is awesome!
Overall Rating: B- for some adult content and language, violence, gratuitous shots of Tony Yayo and worst use of a floral arrangement ever.
Admin Note: So I admit my cropping skills on those last two pictures was wack but I did my best and the beat goes on. Sonny Bono.
