S.W.A.T. (2003)

Director: Clark Johnson

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez

An imprisoned drug kingpin offers a huge cash reward to anyone that can break him out of police custody, and only the L.A.P.D.’s Special Weapons and Tactics team can prevent it.

‘S.W.A.T.’ is an action adventure thriller about a specialist team having to transport a dangerous criminal to a high security prison, but it takes an incredible long time setting up the scene and the characters.

In fact, the film’s first hour is spent on introducing and setting up characters, and their training exercises. This long introduction almost made me loose interest in the movie, as it wasn’t always all that interesting with many trivial moments simply to make up time. This could have been streamlined, which would have resulted in a shorter, faster paced film.

The film only really gets direction after the halfway mark when drug lord Alexander Montel (Olivier Martinez) offers a $100 million reward to whomever gets him out of police custody.

Colin Farrell stars as the films protagonist, Jim Street, who leads the team. There are a few twists in store towards the end regarding some of the characters, and this final hour was thrilling and exciting with some amazing action sequences. If you were to skip most of the first hour, you’ll hardly miss anything. Knowing the story by now, chances are I will do just that when I watch it again.

At the box office, ‘S.W.A.T.’ earned $207 million on a $70 million budget.

Would I watch it again? Yes, I will.