There's something sort of comforting about these average-at-best Clint Eastwood movies. Emphasis on the "sort of," because I can't give lesser Eastwood too much credit. There are things about The Rookie, for example, that are terrible. Charlie Sheen's character's tragic backstory coupled with the conversations he had with his father about it end up unintentionally hilarious because of how stilted and cliched they play out, and all the stereotypical gruff police chief characters felt like they were out of a parody film.
But at the end of the day, there's some dumb, fun action, Eastwood has some silly one-liners, and there's some novelty in seeing Eastwood and Sheen in the same movie. The one thing, however, that gets this at least a middle-of-the-road score of 5/10 would be Raul Julia. He's always fun when he plays a villainous role, and he's hamming it up here and seems to be having fun, which makes his performance entertaining.
Still, this is worth it only for Eastwood fanatics, because chances are, if they've dug down deep enough into his body of work to learn about The Rookie, they've likely seen something worse than The Rookie already.
But at the end of the day, there's some dumb, fun action, Eastwood has some silly one-liners, and there's some novelty in seeing Eastwood and Sheen in the same movie. The one thing, however, that gets this at least a middle-of-the-road score of 5/10 would be Raul Julia. He's always fun when he plays a villainous role, and he's hamming it up here and seems to be having fun, which makes his performance entertaining.
Still, this is worth it only for Eastwood fanatics, because chances are, if they've dug down deep enough into his body of work to learn about The Rookie, they've likely seen something worse than The Rookie already.