Cynical Cinema

When I bought my Blu-Ray player, almost a year ago, it came with 5 free Blu-Ray movies.  I had to fill out a little card checking off the movies I might like, and they would be shipped to my house.  Because it was almost a year ago, there weren’t many movies out on Blu-Ray yet.  So although I could grab Full Metal Jacket and The Prestige, the others were a crap-shoot, so I just picked the three I hadn’t seen.  One of those was S.W.A.T.  I think.  I can’t really remember.  In fact, I had completely forgotten I had ever placed this order, since it took eight months for it to arrive.  And when it did, it came with a not saying there had been a “slight delay” in shipping because one of the titles I had requested was no longer being made and they had to replace it with something else.  And maybe that something was S.W.A.T.  I sure hope I didn’t order it on purpose.

And that’s why the movie, although it’s old, merits a review.  Because people who are loving the Blu-Ray technology are buying up everything they can on that medium.  Every movie that’s out there on Blu-Ray gets serious consideration from the owners of the players.  And I am writing this to warn those of you who may want to purchase all these films to avoid SWAT.  At all costs.  It doesn’t matter one bit how good it looks on your TV, it is a giant waste of your time.  Yet another vehicle for Colin Farrell to play an Irish tough guy, SWAT concerns the LAPD SWAT team, the “toughest, meanest, best, coolest, heaviest, deadliest, most powerful, most bad-ass, most attractive fighting force in the world”.  Or something.

Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, LL Cool J, Samuel L. Jackson, and some other chumps train to be SWAT.  Farrell is getting a second chance at the team, one that comes after a dust-up with his out-of-control former SWAT team-mate.  I wonder if that preamble will be referenced later?  Of course it will!  For the first hour of the movie, the team trains.  And then they pass their course.  Much to the chagrin of their captain, who hates them!  We also get to see the evil antics of some foreign bad-guy.  He might be a drug dealer, or a human trafficker, or  a counterfeiter or a distributor of fake Faberge Eggs.  We have no idea.  We just know he’s evil, because he kills folks, and he will obviously eventually be the guy who faces off against the SWAT team.

So after an hour plus of six guys looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to each other while wearing mad-cool sunglasses, there is actually…the plot!  Of the movie!  Which involves the entire city attacking the SWAT team, who respond by looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to other people while wearing mad-cool sunglasses.  There is actually no story in the film, no compelling character, no single scene that’s cool enough to justify the action portions of the film…no reason at all to watch this hunk of junk.