Theme: Cops

The Shepherd (2008) – Jean-Claude Van Damme and Scott Adkins

The Shepherd is a movie of three parts, in terms of quality. Excusing the pointless, irrelevant & boring opening scene that drags on for 5 minutes, it soon gets off to a very interesting start after that, with a great bar scene reminiscent of the iconic scene outside the bar in Hard Target. Then it tails off into a still interesting but less brilliant movie, as Van Damme deals with criminals crossing the border in his usual kickass style, massively outperforming his comrades. Then the backend of the movie becomes a bit monotonous though, as Van Damme gets trapped in a Mexican prison then handed over to the cartel where he gets tortured a bit and eventually fights his way out, and that’s pretty much the end of the story although there’s half an hour to burn while he’s in the cartel’s hands so the ending is over extended and gets a bit boring for those who’ve seen this movie a few times before even if not in the last few years.

Scott Adkins plays the main muscle of the bad guys. He does a fair job as usual – nice moves but skin-deep emotion.

Natalie J Robb plays the lead female quite well, with vibes of Kate & Ziva from early seasons of NCIS. She plays Van Damme’s boss in the New Mexico border force that he’s assigned to.

Overall I rate it an OK movie, although it had so much more potential early on.

Death Warrant (1990) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Death Warrant is an OK-ish movie from early in Jean-Claude Van Damme‘s career.

Supporting cast includes Paulo Tocha from Bloodsport two years prior. He also appeared a few years later in another Van Damme prison movie called In Hell.

In this movie, Van Damme plays an undercover cop, who enters a prison where a lot of people are mysteriously dying. He’s on a mission to get to the bottom of it – to find out who is killing who and why – and of course to put an end to it. But everything turns to sheet when the guards pin someone else’s murder on him, then bring in his nemesis from the outside world to torture him.

It’s excessively uncomfortable on multiple occasions and for this reason I rate it barely OK. Let’s call it So-So. It’s got its strengths and its weaknesses – it’s got plenty of the good stuff you’d expect from any Van Damme movie, but when I set out to watch a Van Damme movie I don’t really want to be watching the kind of extended uncomfortable scenes that this movie has in several places, including repeated graphic depictions of Van Damme’s nemesis ‘the Sandman’ slowly embedding the tip of his knife into Van Damme’s abdomen as Van Damme gasps in agony. This stuff should have been condensed and made less explicit too.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) – Eddie Murphy

An oldie but goldie – if you’ve not seen this before, or not seen it in the last 10 years, get your popcorn ready now.

Before Kevin Hart, there was Chris Tucker and Martin Lawrence. Before Chris & Martin, there was Eddie Murphy.

Eddie does a good job as the lead character in this story of an uncontrollable detective on holiday in another police force’s jurisdiction. He travelled to Beverly Hills to investigate the powerful businessmen who he suspects killed his friend. The local police aren’t happy about the trouble he’s causing, but he’s not worried about that.

Other cast members do a decent job too, but Eddie Murphy is the centre of attention in this movie – a role he carries very well.

The plot is far from over-complicated, but has just enough going on to make for an enjoyable experience. It’s not so much a martial arts movie, but it’s a light-hearted action-packed cop drama with plenty of shooting and a little bit of hand-to-hand combat as you would expect.

If you enjoyed this movie, consider also watching the two sequels from back in the day: Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) and Beverly Hills Cop III (1994). They are all on a similar level – maybe the first and the third are slightly better than the second. Plus, in the spirit of Matrix Resurrections, this classic trilogy has recently been revived with a fourth instalment – Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024).

In its day

When televisions had only a few channels to choose from, a strong Eddie Murphy movie like Beverly Hills Cop coming on the TV was a big treat for the whole family to enjoy.

In the UK, most people had only four channels on their TV from 1982 (when Channel 4 came out) until 1997 (when Channel 5 was launched). Those who paid extra, for a satellite TV subscription, had only Sky One to enjoy from its launch in 1982, until it expanded to four channels in 1989. So for many years after its release, when this movie was scheduled to be aired on TV, it was something people often organised their day around.

Blue Streak (1999) – Martin Lawrence

Blue Streak is a fun old-school action comedy starring Martin Lawrence (from the Bad Boys movie series) as a jewel thief posing as a police detective in order to recover the diamond he unwittingly stashed inside a police building.

Martin is entertaining throughout and the supporting cast are not bad. It’s mostly light-hearted action comedy, with a few fast-paced scenes. The plot is quite simple but works well for the genre. There isn’t much screen combat here, but it’s tactically interesting.