Film Review: EXTREME JUSTICE (1993, Mark L. Lester)

Stars: 3.7 of 5.
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Scott Glenn (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, W.), Lou Diamond Phillips (THE DARK WIND, LA BAMBA), Yaphet Kotto (ALIEN, BLUE COLLAR), Ed Lauter (DEATH WISH 3), Chelsea Field (COMMANDO, THE LAST BOY SCOUT), L. Scott Caldwell (LOST), Andrew Divoff (LOST), William McNamera (Argento's OPERA). Cinematography by Mark Irwin (VIDEODROME, THE FLY, SCREAM).
Tag-line: "They're an elite task force. They target high-profile criminals, learn how they work...and shut them down."
Best one-liner: "Oh, shiiiiiiit!"

Mark L. Lester is a master of cobbling together chunks of existing genre cinema and fashioning them into an outrageously entertaining end result (COMMANDO, FIRESTARTER, CLASS OF 1984 and 1999). Now, EXTREME JUSTICE isn't anywhere near the top tier of Lester's output, but it ain't the worst way to waste 96 minutes. Within the first ten, we have a shootout, a car chase, the exchange "What the hell are we doing?" -"GETTING THE JOB DONE!," a throwaway black partner who says "Oh, shiiiiiiit!," and a lecture from a superior officer calling our hero a "loose cannon"... this is what we're getting into, ladies and gentlemen, and personally, I'm totally okay with it. [And I think that if this movie were made in, say, 1998, they probably would have called it X-TREME JUSTICE.]

The plot is simple: a ragin' Lou Diamond Phillips (with backwards ball cap and long, early 90's tresses):

You thought I was kidding when I said 'raging,' didn't you? If this was in 3-D, you'd be shitting your pants, I guarantee.

is recruited by a delightfully skeezy Scott Glenn:

(here in a masterful, nuanced role that at times resembles an unholy hybrid between John Hurt and Lance Henriksen!) to serve in a modern-day official police 'posse' of sorts, where "What used to get you in trouble will get you a round of beers with us!" Diamond Lou finds his morals compromised, and at the insistence of his douchey crime-reporter girlfriend, decides to 'do the right thing' and shut the unit down. Blah.

"Moralizing chippy" tries to ruin the movie for the good ole boys.


Yeah, this is all we really wanted! Beers and 90s stylings and hearty slaps on the back!

But Scott Glenn and the rest of the cast are so effin' awesome, it doesn't matter that things get a tad too moralistic. We got Yaphet Kotto, perpetually dressed as a cowboy (ponchos, dusters, etc., etc.) and gunning down wrongdoers with dual six-shooters. (I don't know how much the producers had to pay Yaphet to get him in that silly 5 gallon hat, but I hope it was a lot.)

I'm not gonna lie- Yaphet deserves better than this.

Then we got Ed Lauter ('Shrike' in DEATH WISH 3) as the crusty Captain, master of accents Andrew Divoff ('Mikhail' on LOST) as an asskicking Cuban, and L. Scott Caldwell ('Rose' on LOST) as an Internal Affairs rep.

Andrew Divoff tries to calm down ragin' Lou.


L. Scott Caldwell will call you out for what you are: a loose cannon that doesn't belong on the force.

Now nearly four stars is probably a touch generous, but Scott Glenn's X-treme N-tensity goes a long way.



Side note: I don't know if it's just the word EXTREME in the title, but certain aspects reminded me of a poor man's EXTREME PREJUDICE- a hero (Nolte vs. Diamond Lou) led down the garden path by a unit of antihero character actors (Forsythe, etc. vs. Kotto, etc.) headed by a charismatic skeeze (Ironside vs. Glenn) in a sunbeaten, Western locale (Texas vs. L.A.) that involves botched bank robberies, tense shootouts, and lots of cervezas. Something to think about.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990, John McTiernan)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 134 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, Stellan Skarsgard, Tim Curry, Scott Glenn, Jeffrey Jones, Peter Jason (John Carpenter fave), Andrew Divoff (Patchy on LOST).
Tag-line: "Invisible. Silent. Stolen."
Best one-liner: "Y'know, I seen me a mermaid once. I even seen me a shark eat an octopus. But I ain't never seen no phantom Russian submarine."

It's not often that I sit down to watch an action film and walk away feeling like I've attended a master's class in acting. As a political thriller, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is beyond top-notch. Director John McTiernan, fresh off the success of PREDATOR and DIE HARD, uses the widescreen frame as a canvas to paint his exquisite visuals; images flow into each other with supreme eloquence- any novice film editor would do well to watch this film.

But let me get back to the acting. Alec Baldwin, James Earl Jones, and Scott Glenn are all outstanding, but this film isn't really about the Americans, it's about the Russians.

And the Russians are so good, that it doesn't even matter that none of them are: Sean Connery (Scotland), Sam Neill (Ireland), Tim Curry (England), and Stellan Skarsgard (Sweden). Connery, Scottish accent and all, is a powerhouse. This is his movie and he carries it upon his shoulders. His and Neill's defection to the Americans is the main thrust of the film, and Connery's ironclad resolve and Neill's desire to see Montana give this film some actual emotional weight.

(And Neill's childlike excitement at coming to a land where you don't have to deal with checkpoints and papers gave me absolute chills, considering developments in the past ten years.) But I think the greatest achievement an actor can make is to bring extraordinary pathos to a role which has no business with being poignant. This honor belongs to Tim Curry, the Russian loyalist doctor.

He plays his role with such sincerity, that you almost DON'T want Connery to defect, just because Curry would be disappointed. When Connery ostensibly stays behind to "fight the Americans," Curry gets misty-eyed and commends his bravery. It was most likely even a throwaway line in the script, and Curry makes it so profound that I was almost tearing up. This is what happens when Hollywood's greatest craftsmen collaborate on a film and cast it with outstanding, genius, international actors.

-Sean Gill