Certifiable
Gabriel Macht is Paul Cutler, Iraq war veteran and current squad leader of an LA SWAT team. His superior asks him to do the LA mayor a favor and spend a few weeks in Detroit to get their SWAT team up on the latest hostage rescue tactics. It’s up to Cutler to get the Detroit team federally certified under new Homeland Security standards. With some reluctance, Cutler goes and meets up with the best of Detroit’s SWAT group. These include actors such as Nicholas Gonzalez, Matt Bushell, Micah A. Hauptman, Gino Anthony Pesi. Carly Pope is the love interest for Cutler and also the psychiatrist on staff. Shannon Kane eventually joins the fray as a former military sniper that Cutler calls in for training assistance.
Everything is moving along smoothly until about half way through the film when a hostage situation involving Robert Patrick, who plays Walter Hatch, goes badly and the hostage is killed. Hatch, who was the assailant in this situation, vows revenge against all of Cutler’s team after the hostage dies. This sets up the thriller scenario as Hatch goes on a personal vendetta to kill Cutler and his team. The newly formed team will have to pull it together if they’re to stop this psychotic, skilled killer.
SWAT: FF moves along at a steady pace and while it’s rife with lots of familiar themes and character types, it manages to stay fairly entertaining throughout. If anything, I would have almost introduced Hatch’s character sooner and gave him a chance to become even more feared and villainous, but even as it stands the script isn’t bad. Pretty much no matter how you slice it, this is a straight-forward movie that will probably feel familiar to anyone who watches these types of action films. The thriller twist was different, at least to me, but otherwise this is a standard action movie with limited-to-no replay value.
On Blu-ray
Expect great image and sound quality for SWAT: FF. Being a modern film, you wouldn’t expect anything less, but it’s nice to know that even in this straight-to-video release, image and sound quality were not compromised. From an art direction point of view, I thought a nice balance was achieved between the average looking Detroit and the more decrepit areas where much of the film’s action takes place.
As for extra features, there isn’t much — just a single nine minute feature named “Sharp Shooting: On the Set.” In this feature, cast and crew talk about training and preparation for the movie and lots of production footage is shown. This is basically your ‘making of’ feature that gives viewers some additional insight into the people and locations behind the film.
With that, lets get to the summary..