Movie Review : S.W.A.T.

S.W.A.T. (3.2 of 5)
Always digged they way Mark Shera whipped that repel rope around to the theme music way back before Star Wars made me all glassy eyed for sci-fi. That was one of the many instances of childhood TV that made me like the intros more than the show itself. Maybe I am built to cut trailers and intros more than anything else. Anyways-the 2003 version of S.W.A.T is basically a big budget version of FX’s-The Shield–if you love that show-you will love this movie. But there lies the problem–The Shield- is a TV show- I don-t want a TV show on the big screen. I pay the 8 bucks to take me farther, show me the bullet taking the guy down, show the cussing, and show the explosions. The written story is a good one: Make a misfit S.W.A.T. team, arrest the biggest crime lords son, offer 100 million to anyone who busts him out, drama and explosions galore. But the film is shot a little to episodically and the emotion of the situations is lost. The biggest problem for me was the restraints of the PG-13 rating they were going for. This needed to be gritty and it couldn-t be. The right people were in place: Colin was perfect, Jackson was perfect, Hell, even Josh Charles was perfect. But it all just clicked on a lower level that I wanted it to. But that-s just me-I ALWAYS want True Lies and T2. And a side note, while I understand when a trailer is made it is sometimes early in the editing phase of a film, and a shot or scene in the trailer is omitted from the final cut. This time around there were easily 4 shots and scenes cut from the trailer. When Michelle says-cause it tickles me- in the trailer-it was a deciding factor in me seeing the movie-and after watching the film-It needed it back in!