SWAT is an action movie with some reasonable action scenes and lot of posing and running around with huge machine guns. It is not a bad movie per se, but neither is it a good movie either. Farrell does well enough with his role as does Jackson but they both look like they are "acting" the part. I know that is what they are really doing but as an actor they have failed to instill the belief in the audience that they are in fact members of an elite SWAT team. It's not all their fault though as the writers and director don not give them much of a chance to really bring that belief across.
The scenes with Farrell that are not action scenes are quite good - and just as you are being lulled into something more meaningful than a street gunfight - the camera whips away to the next action set-piece. As for the street gunfights ? Jees - I've seen more realistic stuff on the cartoon network. For a SWAT team - these guys don't have any qualms about jumping from a truck and spraying the entire street with sub-machine gun bullets hitting anything in their range. Neither do the bad guys have any problems with standing in the middle of the road - with no cover - alone - blasting at a plethora of cops / SWAT members et al. Certain death just does not come fast enough in this respect.
Take the first scene - an opener to the film to follow. Two bad guys stand in the middle of the street spraying all and sundry with bullets. No cover, they don't even attempt to hide or protect themselves from police return fire. Yet they still manage to peg a few policemen and continue this ridiculous fight for a few minutes before their inevitable deaths arrive. And as for the SWAT team and their police colleagues - they are unable to kill any of these guys without first discharging several thousand bullets.
A kid with a pellet gun would stop one of these guys quicker.
Later in the film a helicopter is shot down by a shooter from roughly a mile away - now the cops should recruit that guy and save themselves a hell of a budget in bullets and body bags.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the film to an extent that it won't last too long in the memory but it was okay to while away a couple of hours being mildly entertained by it all. However, for it's $80M budget - I suspect the makers wanted a bit more impact. The end scene sets up a possibility of a sequel too - but I reckon that will never happen. If it does (and there is scope there to make this more interesting) then a new director and writer is a must.
6/10.
The scenes with Farrell that are not action scenes are quite good - and just as you are being lulled into something more meaningful than a street gunfight - the camera whips away to the next action set-piece. As for the street gunfights ? Jees - I've seen more realistic stuff on the cartoon network. For a SWAT team - these guys don't have any qualms about jumping from a truck and spraying the entire street with sub-machine gun bullets hitting anything in their range. Neither do the bad guys have any problems with standing in the middle of the road - with no cover - alone - blasting at a plethora of cops / SWAT members et al. Certain death just does not come fast enough in this respect.
Take the first scene - an opener to the film to follow. Two bad guys stand in the middle of the street spraying all and sundry with bullets. No cover, they don't even attempt to hide or protect themselves from police return fire. Yet they still manage to peg a few policemen and continue this ridiculous fight for a few minutes before their inevitable deaths arrive. And as for the SWAT team and their police colleagues - they are unable to kill any of these guys without first discharging several thousand bullets.
A kid with a pellet gun would stop one of these guys quicker.
Later in the film a helicopter is shot down by a shooter from roughly a mile away - now the cops should recruit that guy and save themselves a hell of a budget in bullets and body bags.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the film to an extent that it won't last too long in the memory but it was okay to while away a couple of hours being mildly entertained by it all. However, for it's $80M budget - I suspect the makers wanted a bit more impact. The end scene sets up a possibility of a sequel too - but I reckon that will never happen. If it does (and there is scope there to make this more interesting) then a new director and writer is a must.
6/10.