What, you thought a little mix of snow, rain and sleet was going to stop Bad Movie Monday?
Well, wrong-o (I promise that will be the last time I ever type “wrong-o”)!
So, on this edition of Bad Movie Monday I’ve got real doozy for y’all:
SWAT
2003
Starring: Colin Farrell, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Michelle Rodriguez’s midriff, LL Cool J’s midriff, Olivier Martinez’s accent.
Plot: A SWAT unit featuring Farrell, Jackson, Cool J and Rodriguez squares up against a bad guy (Martinez) who offers 100-mil to whoever can bust him out of custody.
My Reaction: I absolutely hated this movie when I paid to go see it in the theater 15 years ago. Fast-forward to today, and I absolutely cannot hate this movie.
Don’t get me wrong, SWAT is most certainly a bad movie, or else I wouldn’t be writing about it on Bad Movie Monday.
But I don’t hate it. It’s just one of those too-macho-for-its-own-good, hero-with-a-chip-on-his-shoulder flicks.
A lot of the look-how-badass-we-are moments are completely unnecessary, too.
An early-scene montage of Farrell running on a beach in cargo pants and some sort of utility vest with The Rolling Stones’ “Shattered” blasting on the soundtrack is more amusing than it was probably intended to be.
There’s another scene when Farrell is chasing a suspect through a crowd, and he unnecessarily spins his police baton in his hands, because just keeping it on his belt would have been too “blah”, I guess.
The characters all have macho-sounding names like Hondo (Jackson), Street (Farrell), and Gamble (Renner), but all that cock-of-the-walk testosterone gets wasted facing off with a French bad guy?
Puh-leeeaze.
Oh, to be sure, it’s not only men being macho. Michelle Rodriguez is on hand to whoop the daylights out of a hefty gangbanger, and the first time you see her is afterwards when her bare, cut-up midriff is prominently displayed.
Sex appeal, woo!
This, of course, is joked about at one point:
“…bustin’ down doors with J-Lo?”
Woo, boy, there’s a gut-buster for ya.
SWAT also features one of the all-time WORST lines:
“Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t doing the right thing.”
As one of the cops asks in response, “What the hell’s THAT mean?”
My Rating: 3
SWAT is straight out of the shallow end of the action movie pool, even though it desperately wants to be Michael Phelps.
Its tagline, “Even Cops Dial 911”, sums it up nicely.
If you have a 12-pack of Natty Light sitting around that needs to be used, you could do much worse than drinking it all while watching this silly action flick.
Bottoms up!
yonkaholic 