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S.W.A.T. – a drug kingpin offers $100M to anyone that will bust him out of prison; a special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team is assigned to make sure he checks in to the big house. Most evidently, this bad boy has every single cop film cliché you could find in the ‘big book of cop film clichés. The unit’s best hot-shot is a maverick that gets results, but he’s bounced off the team (because of his ill-tempered partner) by pencil pushers; another wildcard officer sees potential and puts both their careers on the line reinstating him – would you like some more platitude sauce with your hackneyed sammich sir? Not content with having a copy/paste story, every sloppy racial / cultural / actor stereotype is also present; Samuel L. is very angry-with-attitude, Renner has a short fuse, macho man Michelle Rodriguez pops up in her white vest, everything’s too familiar, right down to the ‘uncool vegan loser’ and ‘big fat black mama’ that shouts “mmmmmmmm  hhhmmmmmmm”. The action is big, loud and decent, if a little ridiculous – like a Die Hard / Michael Bay movie. It’s all so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly be anything other than a cheesy, tongue in cheek satire of the genre?  Surprisingly enough, despite not having an ounce of originality, S.W.A.T. is super-strength, all too watchable, well-executed, cheese-tastic, guilty pleasure action material.

Score: 6/10

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Rollerball: ‘updated’ re-make of 1975 classic. NHL potential heads over to the Soviet Bloc to partake in a dangerous sport. Opens with an awesome downhill street luge race through ‘cisco. Everything about Rollerball is totally macho: the sport, cars, bikes, heavy metal, technology, steel, babes, action… which begs one question: who cast the effeminate Chris Klein as the hero? He’s far too nice & boyish to be a convincing gruff badass – and looks ridiculous with fake stubble. Even LL Cool J is a bit cuddly these days. Surely a pair of real badasses would have been more appropriate!? The industrial / metal music’s used well for heightening the action scenes and it seemed to borrow visuals from the Running Man, Starlight Express and PS1 game Dead Ball Zone, neither of which is a bad thing. Some crazy spot-the-cameo moments. The last half hour absolutely ruined the film with a lame night-vision chase, feeble sound effects (boi-oi-oing), a clichéd ending, poorly edited action, and the super-crap super-dated symbolism of an American starting a revolution on Soviet territory. Not quite ‘RollerBollocks’, but not far off.

Score: 3.5/10