{"id":4167,"date":"2024-09-22T04:25:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T04:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4167"},"modified":"2024-10-12T20:44:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T20:44:41","slug":"s-w-a-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/22\/s-w-a-t\/","title":{"rendered":"S.W.A.T."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"S.W.A.T. <\/strong>(2003)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, language, sexual references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Clark Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Ayer and David McKenna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Elliot Goldenthal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 8, 2003 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, LL Cool J, Olivier Martinez, Jeremy Renner, Josh Charles, Brian Van Holt, Larry Poindexter, Reg E. Cathey, Ken Davitian, Page Kennedy, Jeff Wincott, Domenick Lombardozzi, James DuMont, Lucinda Jenney, Reed Diamond, Ashley Scott.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $116.9M (US)\/$207.7M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The movie version of the 70s cop show S.W.A.T.<\/strong> is on a short list of TV-to-movie adaptations that don\u2019t totally suck. The list includes The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Dragnet and 21 Jump Street. It\u2019s actually well made and did pretty well at the box office. I really thought there would be a sequel at some point, but it never materialized. Last year, the series was rebooted. The new version, starring Shemar Moore (Criminal Minds) and Alex Russell (Chronicle), is good. My wife and I both enjoy it. Now that the first season has come to a close, I raided the archives and pulled out my DVD of the movie. I hadn\u2019t watched it in nearly 15 years; I forgot how good a movie it is. It still holds up pretty well (give or take some outdated technology).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The movie opens with a bang with LAPD\u2019s S.W.A.T. team responding to a bank robbery. Jim Street (Farrell, Phone Booth) and his hot-tempered partner\/best friend Brian Gamble (Renner, Hawkeye from the Avengers movies) manage to get inside only to be ordered to stand down. Gamble disobeys the order and engages the robbers, an action that results in a hostage being shot. They\u2019re both demoted. An angry Gamble quits the force. Street is sent to work in the gun cage after refusing to rat out his partner.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Six months later, Street is offered a chance to return to S.W.A.T. by Sgt. \u201cHondo\u201d Harrelson (Jackson, Pulp Fiction) who\u2019s been sent by the higher-ups to re-organize the team. Hondo\u2019s other recruits are Chris Sanchez (Rodriguez, the Fast & Furious movies), Deacon \u201cDeke\u201d Kay (LL Cool J, Deep Blue Sea), TJ McCabe (Charles, Dead Poets Society) and Michael Boxer (Holt, House of Wax). The first part of S.W.A.T.<\/strong> deals with the new team training and learning to work together in order to pass a big test their mean C.O., Captain Fuller (Poindexter, American Ninja 2), hopes they fail. Of course, they pass with flying colors.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The team is immediately put to the test with the case of Alexander Montel (Martinez, Unfaithful), a French drug lord and international fugitive taken into custody after a routine traffic stop. After Hondo and his team thwart his escape attempt from a prison bus, Montel announces in front of TV cameras that he will pay $100 million to whoever can break him out of jail before he\u2019s transferred to federal custody. The S.W.A.T. team is assigned the task of escorting Montel to federal prison. The bad guys come out of the woodwork to take him up on his offer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Something occurred to me as I watched S.W.A.T.<\/strong> the other night. It came out the same summer as Bad Boys 2 in which Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reprise their roles from the hit 1995 original. BB2 is directed by Michael Bay which pretty tells you everything you need to know about it. It\u2019s loud, violent and completely out of control. Realism does NOT factor into it in any way, shape or form. You can\u2019t believe a millisecond of it. That\u2019s not true of S.W.A.T.<\/strong> It has plenty of action yet somehow it all feels plausible. Well, most of it anyway. The cops don\u2019t do things real life cops couldn\u2019t do. They\u2019re bad asses without being superhuman. A few stunts are unlikely, but they never violate the laws of gravity or physics. Instead of \u201cYeah, right!\u201d, you say \u201cOkay, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0What I like most about S.W.A.T.<\/strong> is that it\u2019s a throwback to kind of cop movie that studios used to make. It has a gritty feel to it. The action scenes are well done. It has a few funny moments. It also tells a compelling story. The cast does a great job in their roles. We\u2019re not talking Oscar-worthy performances here, but each actor seems comfortable in his or her role. Clark Johnson, a veteran TV director, does a very skillful job with the material. S.W.A.T.<\/strong> moves along at a nice clip. It\u2019s NOT a mindless noisefest. It doesn\u2019t assault the senses. It gets by on solid storytelling. Not many films put their trust in story anymore. It\u2019s nice when one of them does. I\u2019m not saying that S.W.A.T.<\/strong> redefines the genre, but it does provide two hours of solid entertainment. Hey, I\u2019ll take it!\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S.W.A.T. (2003)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, language, sexual references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Clark Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Ayer and David McKenna\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Elliot Goldenthal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 8, 2003 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, LL Cool J, Olivier Martinez, Jeremy Renner, Josh Charles, Brian Van Holt, Larry Poindexter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/SWAT-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5331,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions\/5331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}