Theme: Cops

Police Story 1 (1985) – Jackie Chan

With terrible screeching music, unpleasant panic attacks and crying children among an abundance of terribly disorganised screenplay from the outset — and with dialogue that gives Jackie Chan no opportunity to show anything but sterile character (at least in the English dubbed version) — to say this movie gets off to a poor start would be understatement of the year. But in 1985 people probably had a lot more patience, so let’s see if we can tolerate much more of this, and let’s see if it appreciably improves any time soon.

After 10 minutes of what I can only describe as unwatchable garbage, we get a mildly watchable scene where Jackie’s chasing some crooks and doing a few gymnastic stunts.

Annoying fairground music comes in before 20 minutes, and the screenplay is terrible again. Thus far we’ve had a couple of respectable scenes, no more. The third tolerable scenes comes in around the 20 minute mark and things start to get slightly interesting as Jackie becomes the official protector of the criminal boss’s secretary who’s legally obligated to testify as a prosecution witness against her will.

Around half an hour in, it becomes genuinely funny, as Jackie’s friend at the police pretends to be a killer, and Jackie pretends to quit his job just to convince the witness to beg him to come back and protect her under his own terms. Now we see a bit of real personality and good comedy come out, and the concept is kind of catchy, so it’s already a totally different movie to how it began. Having said that, the dry action-drama creeps back in before long.

While it does get quite captivating through the middle, there’s a really hard-to-watch over-lengthy phone-juggling and choking scene near the start of the second hour — a weak attempt at Charlie Chaplin style humour.

The ending is a like something a bunch of kids put together. People running around like mad men within a shopping mall, trying to catch each other, with minimal entertainment value.

All being said, I rate this movie So-So. It’s got character from time to time, and was probably a hit in its day, but it’s got way to much extended weak patches for my liking – I’m in no hurry to watch it again, but I might come back to it in a decade or so, if terribly bored or looking to enhance the power of this review for example.

Kiss Of The Dragon (2001) – Jet Li and Tchéky Karyo

The beginning of this movie is pretty well made. It’s well cultured, well choreographed, well planned and well edited to keep things moving at a good pace. The sound and picture could be improved but everything else is on point. The casting and acting is pretty good too. Jet Li with his well honed awareness, kung fu skill and quiet charismatic charm, makes a great 007-style Chinese agent, licensed to kill. And his counterpart, Tchéky Karyo, makes a first class baddie too.

Having said that, it is a bit gratuitous early on, and then it gets particularly nasty shortly after half an hour in as the main baddie — the head pimp who is also the local police inspector — forcibly injects drugs back into a prostitute who recently cleaned herself up — to keep her sick, weak, dependent and subservient. Then she gets beaten up by fellow prostitutes, and then by another pimp. This is uncomfortable viewing, but on the plus side, it sets up the following phase of the movie, where she meets Jet Li, the shy respectful gentleman — this part of the movie is convincingly made too.

By the half way mark, it looks set for an Above Average rating, give or take a bit since the plot has yet to really unfold yet — we’ve had little more than a strong opening thus far, with some nasty bits dragging it down.

As the movie progresses, the entertainment dwindles while the unpleasantries fail to subside. As a result, in the end I’m going to rate this a Bang Average movie. Indeed, the build up is considerably better than the middle. Not that the entertainment completely dies off, but the smooth fun vibe from early on is mostly absent in the middle, only to reappear briefly near the end — if not for the cool ending when Jet Li openly storms the police station, I would have rated it Below Average due to the low quality middle that significantly lowered the rating from the Above Average beginning.

Dredd (2012) – Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby

This movie is made to appear a bit less dated than the previous one. Unfortunately, there’s no Stallone in this movie — instead, Karl Urban plays the lead role, and his voice seems relatively timid and unconvincing at first, but it grows on you — he did alright in the end, but lacked personality — kind of reminiscent of Mandalorian style.

In-keeping with the original, it gets a bit gruesome, for example, people being drugged, skinned alive and thrown off a towerblock within the first 15 minutes. Quite distasteful, and typical of Hollywood. The movie continues to glorify drug-based highs and gory violence too. An automatic downgrade is warranted.

Negatives aside, it gets interesting by half an hour in, as Judge Dredd and his psychic rookie apprentice called Anderson (well played by Olivia Thirlby) get trapped in a tower block by the criminal gang that runs it. Unfortunately though, that pretty much spells the end of the movie already since they stay trapped in that building for the next hour.

I rate this movie roughly on a par with the original — a bit worse on story, but a bit better in terms of cinematography and modern effects. That makes it a Bang Average movie, which seems fair. It had far more potential off the back of its core concept & genre, but was never set up to achieve anywhere near its potential, it seems. Still, it wasn’t bad — it did alright in holding attention, if you can excuse a bunch of short distasteful patches that warrant a bit of fast-forwarding for anyone who’s seen this movie before and knows roughly what to expect.

Judge Dredd (1995) – Sylvester Stallone

This movie is a weird combination of being already quite dated, yet futuristic in genre.

It’s frequently funny while being delivered in a serious tone — funny in how it accurate captures and exaggerates the inherent flaws in the long arm of the law.

It gets a bit filthy half way through, after Dredd gets wrongly accused, and convicted, then his prisoner transport shuttle gets grounded, and Dredd gets captured by a family of cannibals. Fortunately this scene doesn’t last too long, and evolves into something mildly interesting, albeit a bit slow and boring still.

It gets a bit gruesome at the end, as half-made clones come to life looking like zombies covered in goo. That whole scene is reminiscent of the final battle scene from Demolition Man — also starring Sylvester Stallone (alongside Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock) — from 2 years prior. Not necessarily in the zombie theme, but everything else about the set and vibe is similar.

I’m going to rate this movie Bang Average, and that may even be slightly generous — it had a lot of potential but wasn’t really played well to satisfy the action hero movie fan. That makes it a similar level to the 2012 remake, starring Karl Urban, which I also rated Bang Average, even if it has a different mix of pros & cons.

The Medallion (2003) – Jackie Chan, Lee Evans and Claire Forlani

The Medallion 2003 is another lighthearted slapstick action movie from Jackie Chan. This one has a mildly curious plot twist in the middle, when Jackie Chan comes back from the dead. It benefits from comedian Lee Evans, and Claire Forlani (from Meet Joe Black), as Jackie Chan’s partners in policework. There’s a bit of sci-fi fantasy here with this one. I rate it Bang Average so far as action hero movies go, because the characters aren’t deep and the action is so lighthearted. On the plus side, it’s mildly entertaining throughout. A young Scott Adkins plays one of the baddies’ goons in a few fight scenes here.

Rush Hour (1998) – Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan

The first 1 hour was pretty much smooth highly entertaining action-comedy starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in an unusual partnership that neither wanted initially but turned out to be good for everyone except the bad guys.

The last half hour is a bit more tense, but is still alright. On the strength of the majority of the movie which is highly entertaining, I’m going to give this a Decent rating which is close to the limit of what a slapstick comedy can score.

It’s slightly dated, but not by much. The sound effects can get irritating, but it’s tolerable.

If you loved this movie, you’re in luck since there are a couple sequels although they’re not quite as good as the original.

Sequels

Rush Hour 2 (2001) picks up from where the first movie left off, with Jackie and Chris on holiday together, singing Beach Boys songs in a car in China when they get called to an urgent case. The sound effects early on are even more irritating than they were in the back end of the last movie. The sense of mystery is also gone, so the plot and even the action seem a bit hollow in places compared to last time round. As a result, I rate this one a step down from the original. We can call it Above Average. Roselyn Sanchez makes a nice addition to this movie, as one of the lead females – an undercover secret service agent. Whoever got her involved has great taste. Zhang Ziyi plays the other lead female – one of the main baddies. She does quite well too. John Lone plays the main bad guy, not very convincingly, but it suffices.

Rush Hour 3 (2007) is no less muddled but still contains some strengths including some originality — albeit less — and some remnants of what we loved from the previous Rush Hour movies. I rate this movie Bang Average. It basically replicates the same formula as the last one, but with a bit less of the goodness and a bit more of the annoying stuff — it’s just a slightly weaker version of the same thing really, which is roughly what the last one was from the original before it although the original had far more conceptual originality of course.

Trap House (2025) – Dave Bautista and Inde Navarrette

This is low quality action movie entertainment, which does little but dirty Dave Bautista‘s name, as should probably be expected from ‘Signature’. It’s about equal to a typical made-for-Netflix action-drama series.

Barely Watchable seems like a fitting rating for this movie early on, when it’s mostly tolerable but frequently a struggle to justify the time wasted, even for an avid action movie connoisseur and a Dave Bautista fan.

The plot spices up a bit 25 minutes in, as the kids form their own tactical team. It doesn’t make a great movie by any means, but the injection of a little plot serves to mask the awful teenage drama dialogue and upgrades it to a Watchable movie — a little bit easier than Barely, but only just.

Aside from Dave Bautista, the most memorable other cast member is probably the girl (played by Inde Navarrette) whom Bautista’s son (played by Jack Champion) falls for, who turns out to be (spoiler alert) the daughter of the cartel bosses (the mother played by Kate del Castillo).

Until Death (2007) – Jean-Claude Van Damme and Selina Giles

Van Damme looks tired in this movie, and looks a bit weird with them sideburns. But at the same time, his job is probably easier since he’s playing a cop who can get away with whatever he wants – until he gets framed.

The lump on Van Damme’s forehead is also looking particularly bloated in this movie. The mood is pretty sour too. Like Van Damme doesn’t really want to be there, and maybe half of the crew don’t either. But they kind of made this tiredness match the moody genre — a poor excuse for an action movie, with unnecessary flashes of sleaze and even Van Damme heating up his own opioids on a spoon. By the end of the first hour, I have to rate it a couple levels below average, making it about So-So. It’s certainly not unwatchable though, providing you haven’t seen it in years and don’t very well remember how it goes and are sufficiently bored.

The movie has a major permanent change of mood around half way in — towards the end of the second hour — after Van Damme’s character was shot, barely survived, and slowly starts waking up from a coma. Here his wife, who was about to divorce him, spends quality time with him and they become a close couple again – free from the plague of his former vices, since he’s lost his memory and essentially started his life again — but his memories slowly return.

It gets particularly unpleasant about 20 minutes before the end, when the murderous crooks walk in on Van Damme’s pregnant wife while he’s away. The ending from that point on, is highly skippable if you’ve seen it before — the wife gets kidnapped and it’s just a boring standoff and shootout until the end, a bit like the boring long shootout ending of the otherwise top Van Damme movie Hard Target minus a few stunts. Massive missed opportunity with the interesting plot that unravelled around the middle of this movie since it arrived too late and rolled out too slow from there on until the long boring ending came about.

Selina Giles plays the lead female about adequately, and the actor playing chief of police does a good job too. Van Damme isn’t up to his usual standard — partly due to the poor script and partly probably because he’s having trouble with his personal life at the time.

Honest Thief (2020) – Liam Neeson

This movie starts out slow and boring, but not impossible to watch since it’s clearly just warming up to something via a tedious, inefficient backstory. 10 minutes in, things clearly indeed appear to be warming up, as Liam Neeson‘s character Tom rings the police to confess to being a famous uncaught bank robber.

Half an hour in is when the action really kicks in though, as the FBI agents sent to investigate his confession find the money, then attempt to kill Neeson, then get surprised by their own boss and kill him while Neeson gets away in a bullet-showered car chase.

By 45 minutes in, Tom decides to attempt to clear his name before handing himself in, and by 60 minutes in, his girlfriend Annie (played by Kate Walsh) has been almost killed, and he goes on the attack against the two rogue agents.

The rogue agents themselves are played by Jai Courtney (from Divergent) and Anthony Ramos (from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts). Ramos’s character here has a conscience but is constantly led astray but his more psychopathic friend played Courtney, who by 70 minutes in (with 30 minutes to go) is pretty much a lone ranger, having alienated his partner in crime, his new boss, and of course Tom & Annie.

The old boss of the two rogue agents, who they soon killed, was played by Robert Patrick (the liquid metal antagonist called T-1000, from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 1991). The new boss of these two agents, who gets tipped off by Tom, is played by Jeffrey Donovan with vibes like a cross between Clint Eastward, Jesse Enkamp and Magnus Carlsen.

A slightly clever ending somewhat saves this movie, solidifying its rating as better than merely Watchable. Indeed, I rate it So-So.

The Commuter (2018) – Liam Neeson

This movie kicks off with some terribly tedius non-plot quasi drama scenes that attempt to build backstory but are executed in a seeminly intentionally messy muddled way.

Within 10 minutes, things start to get real, as Liam Neeson‘s NPC type character gets a rude awakening in the form of an unexpected termination from work. But the movie goes straight back to muddled drama mode.

20 minutes in, it starts to get interesting, as Neeson’s character meets a strange woman who sets him a challenge with a large cash prize, and the core concept of this movie begins to reveals itself.

Around half way in, Neeson’s character gets framed for the murder of an FBI agent, all the while staying on a commuter train where he’s been for most of the movie already. At this point, this movie looks set to be rated Watchable – no more, since the first half has been so boring with such little going on. Sure, there’s a vibe of mystery among the semi-helpless angst but that’s literally the entire movie thus far summed up already, so it’s not a great fit for an action hero movie fan but not completely off the mark either.

Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t get any better until the last half hour. The angty stress & tension takes a long time to subside. It turns into a bit of a horror train ride in the secod half, and takes forever to let up. It’s a very one dimensional movie in this respect, and falls short of the ideal vibe us action hero movie connoisseurs are most interested in. But it’s not completely off the mark – Neeson still plays a bit of an adept hero – kind of. He especially comes into his own in the last half an hour, when he takes the lead and starts telling everyone on the crashed train what to do, to help them survive. From that moment on, he gets more dominant as the movie goes on, until in the closing scene he’s full re-instated as a cop and re-finds the woman behind the phonecalls.

In the end, I rate it So-So. A couple levels down from Bang Average, and just a few levels up from utterly Unwatchable. But this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it at all – it’s still a level above Watchable.

Non-Stop (2014) – Liam Neeson

This movie begins with Liam Neeson‘s character acting rather stressed and dazed in an airport, ignoring random people who speak to him, and looking at everyone suspiciously, especially a man dressed like a traditional muslim. Within 5 minutes you can probably guess where this movie is going, and why it’s been commissioned – to make everyone look at everyone suspiciously in public places, especially airports and train stations etc – and especially muslims. And the speech by the actual hijacker in the last 15 minutes is really pushing this narrative hard, so much that if you’ve ever seen this movie before, you might be tempted to switch off at that point in order to skip that nonsense while knowing you’re not missing anything special in the ending. Anyway, there’s nothing new about Neeson pansying to this kind of agenda, so let’s get back to seeing how the movie goes down.

In the 11th hour, ahem, the 11th minute, things finally start to get the slightest bit interesting, as Neeson’s character texts a message to someone saying “we are go” when the plane’s about to go. This tells us he’s probably doing some kind of job on that plane, but we still don’t know quite what it is.

In the 15th minute we see he is indeed an air marshall, or at least, he has the gun and badge of one while on the plane. Then one minute later, someone starts texting him, to mess with him, and the movie really kicks in, as the anonymous texter threatens to kill someone every 20 minutes until 150 million dollars is paid into his account.

The movie proceeds into a session of scrutinising all the passengers, trying to figure out who is the killer. In the real world, of course, bank accounts get frozen very easily, so this whole “wire me the ransom money” concept that’s so common in movies like this, is utter nonsense.

This one a very gritty, suspenseful action mystery movie with an extremely simple yet still confusing plot until the last 15 minuts. I have to rate it Below Average, and even that’s complimentary considering the BS it’s pushing. First time viewers may rate it more highly, but when you remember the vague outline of the story, there’s not much left to rewatch it for, until several years later by which time you’ve mostly forgotten how it goes and can kind of enjoy it again until it get ridiculous near the end in which case you might want to switch off early.

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

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

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 (1999)

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.