Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review - S.W.A.T.

Welcome to Samuel L Jackson Month

Where we’ll be looking at 9 films of varying quality starring Samuel L motherf*ucking Jackson. We’re starting off the month with S.W.A.T., unless I’ve already published Big Game, in which case that’s what we’re starting with.

S.W.A.T., based on an TV series from 1975 of the same name was released in 2003. Produced on a $70m budget it made a fairly respectable $210m at the box office. Reception was mixed with it holing at 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 5.4/10, 45 on Metacritic and a 6 on IMDb. What are my thoughts? Let's take a look.

It’s Los Angeles and in a hostage situation gone bad, one of the officers, played by Jeremy Renner (from Mission: Impossible and the Avengers) goes off mission and ends up in a situation that forces him to severely injure one of the hostages. He and his partner, Jim (Colin Farrell) are resigned to the gun cage but he’s too angry to consider the offer and storms out.

6 months later, Hondo (played by Samuel L Jackson), is assigned to create a team of SWAT officers for the field. Seeing his skill, he puts Jim on that team. Meanwhile, a wanted criminal Alex Montel (Oliver Martinez) is caught on a minor traffic violation and is about to be transferred to a state prison. He makes an offer of a hundred million dollars for his release, and Hondo and his team are tasked with escorting him to a more secure location. But trouble follows them all the way as people are willing to do terrible things for a such a high reward.

The one thing that bugs me most about this movie is just how dumb some of the characters can get.

Airport Security

“Gee, this guy’s carrying a knife through security, but apparently it’s a family heirloom or something”
“Let’s make him mail it home and not confiscate it. I mean, it’s not as if 9/11 happened in this universe, right”

Media

“I’ll give $100,000,000 for my release”

“Did you get that? He says he’s offering $100,000,000 for his release. Let’s play this clip ad nauseam so that everyone hears about it”

Police Station I

“Damn it, I can’t get through to them. I mean the last time they reported in they said they were following a suspect into a storm drain but I don’t see any reason why they can’t make contact”

Police Station 2
“Sir, a bright light has just come on at the airport”

“Get every cop and S.W.A.T. officer down there now”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir, you did say the perps were two trained SWAT officers, isn’t this an obvious trap or decoy?”
“Worked for Gordon in the Dark Knight Knight Rises, didn’t it?”

Yes, I'm aware this movie came out before the Dark Knight Rises

Seriously, these all happened in the movie. To be honest, I’d be more forgiving but the rest of this plot is desperately generic. There’s only a few moments that character really gets to shine, the focus is the mission but to be honest, I’ve seen it done better.

That’s not to say it’s devoid of positives mind you. The action is well done for the most part, apart from the one at the train yard where it’s so dark you can’t see most of the fight. There is absolutely tension (although spoiler alert, only the bad guys die) and the plan by the villains is actually one of the smarter plans, even if it did rely on stupidity.

We start off Jackson Month with a very very average movie, dragged down by dumb moments but not especially awful

Rating 50/100

Next time is my favourite movie of the line up - Big Game

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Images/clips used in this review are from S.W.A.T. and Avengers Assemble (The Avengers) and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use