S.W.A.T. – Just big, dumb (action) fun

I’ve watched ‘S.W.A.T.’ so many times and enjoyed it every last one of them.  No, that’s not me saying that it’s a classic film and worthy of future study – it’s just fun (if you’re into action/co-related films).

Back when Colin Farrell was being touted as someone who could headline a big-budget Hollywood movie, he plays the (overly-macho named, in my opinion) Jim Street – a no nonsense S.W.A.T. team member in L.A. who steps over the line during a high-stakes hostage mission and gets chewed out by his superior (the way all on-screen cop-heroes seem to do at one stage or another!).  He’s sent to the ‘gun cage’ for his actions, i.e. taken off active duty while his former partner (played by Jeremy Renner) is just let go from the force.

However, Farrell is soon recruited by Nick Fury (or at least the L.A. S.W.A.T. team’s version of our favourite Marvel SHIELD leader), or at least he’s recruited by Samuel L Jackson, who has to come up with a ‘Dirty Dozen-like’ bunch of police misfits for... well, something.  It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that Jackson assembles a bit of a early 2000s ensemble cast, including Michelle Rodriguez and LL Cool J in order to make sure the bad-guy Alex Montel (Olivier Martinez – an actor who I only knew because he was once dating Kylie Minogue!) stays in chains.  Little do they know how many people want to bust him out for a decent price!

One minor gripe is that because Alex Montel is behind bars throughout much of the movie, there’s never really much chance for him to interact with our heroes.  Instead, the bulk of the film is about the cops and their struggle to overcome their own demons and get along.  There may be another bad guy for them to deal with, but, on the off-chance you can’t guess who that might be when you sit down to watch, I won’t spoil it.  Anyway, that’s just a minor gripe.  Ultimately, what you have here is an action-packed cop-version of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ where the above bunch of misfits have to conquer their own differences for the greater good (and bust a fair few bad-guys while they’re at it).

So, if you’re looking for plenty of action and wise cracks, this should suitable quench your thirst of a style of action movie that would probably be more at home in the nineties rather than 2003.  It’s definitely a good time, but just don’t bother with its sequel, as it doesn’t carry on the cast’s stories and isn’t even nearly worthy of the ‘S.W.A.T.’ name.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that