S.W.A.T. stands for Special Weapons and Tactics and in the world of the police office they are the crème de crème of each and every single police force. They are the officers you call when the regular officers are in over there head. They are the men who are highly trained in all types of weaponry and with the ability to handle any situation that arises. Jim Street was once one of their most highly valued members tell a hostage situation went wrong and one of the hostages was injured because of some mistake Jim and his partner made. Now out of the good graces of the department he has been demoted to what most officers consider a lowly duty of the working the gun cage. But with the department under heavy fire for mistakes made by police officers in L.A. the top brass are bring back one of the original S.W.A.T. members to try and clean up the image of the department. Sergeant Hondo has been asked to hand pick and train five officers to lead an elite S.W.A.T. group that will bring back the luster of the elite police force. Street catches his attention as a highly trained officer and Hondo wants him, so much so he is willing to risk his career for him. And this decision is soon to come under fire when an international terrorist is caught on a simple traffic violation. Now S.W.A.T. is given the duty of transferring him to a federal prison but there is one snag he has offered to pay 100 million dollars to anyone who can free him which is about to bring out every criminal in the hopes of one large payday and one large headache for Hondo and his S.W.A.T. members.

Some movies have such vast potential that they fail to realize that they make you sad for all the talent they wasted, S.W.A.T. is one of those movies. While the movie was good, it could have been great and that left you with the aftertaste of bitter disappointment. What was wrong with the movie, simple it took way too long to get the main story and main action. It spent to long bogged down in character building and training and not enough time doing what it did best and that was delivering intense action sequences. I understand character development and in some movies it is critical, not in this one, what this should have been and was not was an action packed adventure ride start to finish. I am not saying the last quarter of the movie wasn’t incredible it was, but it seemed like there was a lot to wade though to get to it. Popcorn movies do not need to make excuses for entertaining us, they do not need to spend vast quantity of time making us understand their motives, all they to do is entertain us. I recently read how all Samuel L. Jackson’s all have an element of his Pulp fiction character, this movie did not fail to have that as well. Yes, he plays the badass mofo, with the large mouth and bigger attitude yet again but I for once would like to see how far his acting skills would go without that persona. I should probably give this movie a lower rating but I was impressed by the movie once it remembered it was a popcorn flick and not some drama about the heroic officers of S.W.A.T. The movie was slow in the beginning and did drag in the middle but it eventually did deliver on what it promised it would so I was somewhat forgiving and gave in the equivalent of a C grade.
3 stars out of 5