Great for a mindless summer flick!


Colin Farrell... *drooooooooooool*


Guys, a hot chick is in it, too.

I didn't think it was mindless. The characters were likeable, the stunts were not too over the top or unrealistic, many cliches were avoided, etc. I would call Charlie's Angels2 and The Core "mindless."

Heheh. Okay.

I may actually see it. Clark Johnson, who got his start playing Det. Meldrick lewis on Homicide, directed it. He won an Emmy for diretcing an episode of The Shield, and has directed episodes of high profile shows like The West Wing. He also had a bit part in the VASTLY underrated thriller Nick of Time with Johnny Depp.

Nick of Time... was that the one with Christopher Walken and an assassination plot? (Been quite awhile since I've seen it, and if that is the one I'm thinking of, I agree with your assessment, Luigi. Surprisingly good film, IMO.)

According to IMDB, yeah that's the one.

Wasn't it the one that supposed played out in "real time"?

It is pretty good. Definitely above average. While it does have its share of mindlessness it does in some parts delve deeper into the characters, esp. Street and Hondo.

I didn't mention Nick of Time, CR. Brian Webber did.

What in the world? (slaps forehead) Sorry about that, guys!

To be picky Johnson got his start doing Night Heat, playing Det. Dave Jefferson.

I want to mate with Colin Farrell.

I'll take Michelle Rodriguez. The beauty of it is that she's from Jersey City, NJ, right next to my home town, where I hear she still hangs out with her friends, so she's close by.

Here's an interesting nit someone submitted to Roger Ebert's site:

There is a time-space conundrum in "S.W.A.T." It goes something like this:

1. In the universe that the film "S.W.A.T." inhabits, the original 1970s TV show clearly did exist. After all, there is one scene where the characters begin to sing the theme song and there is another moment where someone is seen watching an old rerun on a television.

2. However, the characters played by Sam Jackson (Hondo), Colin Farrell (Jim Street) and the guy who gets shot when the evil cops snag the swarthy Dr. Evil wannabe (T.J.) are all characters from the original show. To further confuse matters, Steve Forrest, who played Hondo on the show, pops up at the end of the film driving the "S.W.A.T." truck carrying our heroes to their next adventure.

I can accept one or the other but it seems to me that by trying to mix up the two universes--the "real" world and the world of the show--the filmmakers are violating all the laws of physics that we learned from Einstein or the Jean-Claude Van Damme epic "Timecop." By letting the worlds overlap, they have caused a rift in the time-space continuum.

Peter Sobczynski, Chicago

Luigi, a similar conundrum exists in the X-Files universe. Remember, the X-Files lives in the same universe as Law&Order/Homicide, because Detective Munch has been in all three. However, the X-Files is known to be a TV show in the Homicide universe.

I belive we decided that the solution was that it's an "alternate" version.

So for the SWAT example, the characters wouldn't be Hondo, Street, TJ, Deke, etc..., they'd be "Rio", "Rhodes", "BC", "Duke", etc...

Maybe its just me, but some of the stuff in this film seemed more like it was intended for a tv pilot than a big screen movie, like Street being involved with Boxer's sister. That seemed like something that would come up in future episodes of a tv series. BTW, the scene when she's moving out seemed like a rather blatant example of product placement, as she's carrying around stuff in what is very obviously a Sony box instead of a generic cardboard box.

Samuel Jackson is possibly another case of "too old for the job." It seems to me someone his age wouldn't be doing field stuff with the SWAT team. On the other hand its nice the script makes his character a reasonable age, as opposed to something like Shaft, where he wasn't that much younger than Richard Roundtree.

The saxophone player in the subway that Montel and the others escape into looked like it was jazz sax great Sonny Rollins.

Its interesting that the film featured a French villian. One can't help but wonder if the tension between France and the US in the past couple of years had anything to do with this. Its also interesting that Montel is refered to a number of times in the film as "the frog." On the one hand this is probably realistic, but on the other hand I doubt a film could get away with one of the main good guys calling someone say chink over and over.

Bruce Gray, who played Richard Segerstrom, aka the hostage on the Lear jet, is a familiar face to many Canadian tv viewers, having played Adam Cunningham on the successful Canadian tv series Traders in the late '90s.

I missed him, but the credits say Jeff Wincott is in the film. Wincott starred in the mid 80s Canadian cop series Night Heat, which as I noted above was an early role of Clark Johnson's.

Just to clarify my Shaft comment a bit, what I meant is that Jackson was too old to be cast as John Shaft's nephew, as he's not much younger than Richard Roundtree. Things would have worked better with an actor like Wesley Snipes, who is 15 or so years younger than Roundtree.

Another thing I forgot to mention is the bar scene with our heros just after they've won the airplane hijack test. When Hondo walks in to the bar there's a shot of the bartender with what looked like a look of recognition when he sees Hondo. Part of a plot line that was edited out of the final cut perhaps?

I wouldn't have gone to see this movie on my own, but my Colin Farrell-crazed roommate took me to it. I was pleasantly surprised.

I thought the opening was really well done. I thought the direction for this part in particular was slightly strange (many different angles, the use of "TV" footage) but also rather effective. I was surprised at the amount of depth in the characters. Two things I really liked: character in the Cage whose wife had made him convert to Mormonism, and I thought Street's girlfriend moving out was interesting--I just wish it had gone somewhere. As Tim suggests, it seems like it was intended for a tv pilot than a big screen movie. Also, he mentions the Sony product placement--what about the Dr. Peppers everywhere?! And the use of "frog" really annoyed me after awhile. Once, okay. Three or four times? No.

Yeah, I forgot about the Dr. Pepper. And the one character being a Mormon by marriage and "cheating" on his Mormon restrictions was another plot element that almost seems like something intended more for a tv pilot than a big screen movie, the kind of thing that would be played for comic relief in subsequent episodes.

Something that happens in movies and television all the time is jurisdictional role reversal. Members of a SWAT team do not escort federal/international criminals to prison, US Marshals do. In a situation like this, their Special Operations Group, or SOG would probably take charge, and maybe keep SWAT members around for assistance. Other than that, quite entertaining, and in reference to the first post, Michelle Rodriguez is not appealing IMO.