If you've been in your local video rental store lately, you've- Oh right, those don't exist anymore. If you've been to Netflix Instant or your local gas station check out counter, you've probably noticed a lot of movies you've never heard that claim to be sequels to movies that were actually good. Welcome to the modern equivalent of the Italian Cinema's Sequelsploitation. Only instead of being unauthorized, they merely found franchises that didn't need or want a sequel and paid a paltry sum to get the right to make a sequel. Now I'm not saying they're all bad mainly because I hope there is some theoretical exception that proves the rule. I will however give basically anything a chance because it could turn out to be good or it could turn out to be horrible, which is also good. How bad is this movie? I watched Dungeon Siege 2 around the same time and it was
the better movie.
As a matter of professional pride, I have to defend how blurry some screenshots of this movie are going to be. This is because the movie is probably the shakiest and blurriest of all the shaky cam movies I have ever seen. I can only hope they were trying to get a tax incentive for hiring camera men who suffer from both Parkinsons and ADHD because the idea that this was in any way intentional is mind boggling. I could stick a camera in a paint shaker and kick it down a hill and the producers would ask me how I was able to stabilize the footage so well. The movie makes Cloverfield look like 12 Angry Men. People have filmed themselves being ejected from rollover accidents with more clarity than this.
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How does this even happen?! |
The movie begins with a stock footage tour of Santa Monica before heading to the house of one of the only survivors of a secret government experiment to create the ultimate douchebags to bridge the Douche Gap. Ultra Douche is holding a house party that gets interrupted by a pair of guys who are demanding money that UD owes them for absolutely no explained reason. UD says he doesn't have the money and the pair take the entire party hostage with their demands being to give them their money or they'll kill everyone at the party. This doesn't seem like the best strategy to get their money back on account of being completely insane but it slams us into the main credits rather than giving us a scene transition. The opening credits are of course also shot in Blurry Cam with the added bonus of the lighting being like someone threw chlorine in your eyes and made you navigate an obstacle course of Klieg lights and then on top it all, desaturated all the footage.
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This is what happens when you put the Gaffer from Robot Holocaust in charge |
After some blurry SWAT officers arrive, we meet the alleged hero of the movie Sgt Paul Cutler who is in charge of the SWAT response to the scene and with his Magic Hacking Pad takes control of all the full sized security cameras in the house. He then calls up UD who is inexplicably in another room armed with an assault rifle despite the last scene ending with a pistol in his face. Logic and continuity have been kicked in the knees and its only 3 minutes into the movie and it gets far worse from here as Cutler asked UD what happened. UD says some guys randomly showed up and took everyone hostage and the police should "Come in here and shoot these assholes". UD sees the mammoth 90s security camera in the corner suddenly and opens fire on it with his assault rifle.
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I'd say this looks like my Grandmother filmed it but her horribly framed pictures were at least in focus |
Using his Superfriends Batman level detective work, Cutler declares that this is a drug deal gone bad (!), and sends in the SWAT teams. Here we are introduced to the movies other gimmick: Putting a camera on fucking everything. See, the good SWAT movie came out during an explosion of personal video recording and the 24 hour news networks and would have snippets of video done in a gritty, realistic style like it was being filmed by someone at the scene. This was a stylistic touch that worked mainly because that was a good movie being done by competent people who knew what they were doing. This movie puts a camera on fucking everything and I mean everything. You know you're in for a rough ride when even the battering ram has a low resolution POV camera strapped to it.
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Also, the hostage takers seem to have the sound man pinned down behind that bush! |
So after a POV shot of the battering ram smashing through the door, they throw one of the movies incredibly weak flashbangs at Ultra Douche and he surrenders while yelling that the hostage takers "drank all his beer". They then slowly saunter into the room with the two hostage takers while one of them is using an innocent woman as a human shield. I have to guess that they either were just really worn out from running towards the house or went "Fuck it, its Friday". The one without a hostage surrenders while every one of the SWAT team officers surrounds the other guy. Cutler orders the officer with the grenade launcher to "take the shot" because he's locked on with the laser (!) and a full fifteen seconds later he fires.
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"Can you identify this bucket full of your daughter?" |
He hits the hostage taker in the hand with some kind of 40mm projected water disruptor, saving the hostage. Now, I'm not an EOD expert but I'm pretty sure something that can penetrate and fuck up a bomb enough to render it useless will probably penetrate through his hand into his abdomen, causing him to die a horrible death. I'm going to let it slide because there are far worse things ahead. The Captain comes over while he is putting his gear away and tells him that he is going to be sending him to Detroit to teach them "FBI HRT Certification". Cutler says that he would rather go back to Iraq than Detroit.
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"I never asked for this" |
The best part of this exchange is that the movie is filmed entirely in Detroit so he's talking about what a shithole Detroit is, while filming in Detroit and receiving film subsidies from the state. This is probably what instigates the next scene after he is
bribed to go to Detroit, he is driving around on a "scenic" tour of Detroit and suddenly goes "Detroit ain't so bad". Which just sounds like an amazing tag line for their advertising campaign to get tourists.
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"Ask about our urban decay tours!" |
He heads down to the police station and walks in on Officer Kellogg having the audacity to be eating a waffle sandwich! He asks what their response time is and upon hearing that its 15 minutes, heads down to a bus terminal and calls in a fake bomb threat to test their response time on bullshit calls. After this, he heads down to the station to talk to the SWAT teams CO and demands that he be put in charge of the SWAT team instead of being a mere adviser. Cutler uses the fact that he is somehow able to get them all fired to get command of the team and heads down to browbeat them. He sees an officer eating some ice cream and tells him that he better enjoy it because he won't be allowed to eat anything unhealthy while he's around, despite the fact that he
is in perfect shape. He then proceeds to tell another officer that he is banned from smoking for the duration of his stay
because he doesn't like smoking. He then overrides their protests with a literal "It sucks to be you."
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"Utterly unlikable in....15 minutes, 40 seconds." |
After finding out that Cutler is the end result of all those experiments in douchebaggery and is in fact the Omega Douche, we see him going through his new squads files. Their dossiers that give all their personal information including all their where they live, what they're good at, what they're terrible at, psychological evaluations and a list of their weaknesses. I am not making this up but this will be a key plot point later, so help us God. The next morning they start their training which consists of a filler montage of them working out in a field and them shooting women and children on the target range.
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"Skateboarding is not only a crime but a capital offense!" |
I'm not joking, he double taps those children and proceeds to the next target. And yes, every other shot is a jittery, low quality weapon mounted camera. After finding out that his new team is competent AND capable of killing children without a second thought, Omega Douche then decides to throw them the first of his promised "Curve balls". He makes Kellogg (The best shooter in the entire force!) shoot with 20 pounds handcuffed to his wrist with music blasting into his ears. After Kellogg fails to hit anything while significantly handicapped, Omega Douche criticizes him for his poor accuracy and tells him he needs a lot more training.
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"I am a Grand Master in Douche-Kwon-Do." |
They get a call up to a hostage situation at an office building. Using the magic tablet, they determine that a woman named Rose is being held hostage by an obviously strapped for cash Robert Patrick playing a man named Walter Hatch. Omega Douche calls up to the office where she is being held and asks for Rose. Walter demands that they leave immediately and hangs up. Seconds later a chair with a cell phone taped to it smashes through the window of the sixteenth floor and starts ringing. Telling his men to cover him (leading to the amazing sight of everyone aiming their pistols and shotguns near vertically), he picks up the phone and in the goofiest voice possible asks "Heya, why are we talking on this phone?"
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"Can you hear me now?" |
Walter tells him that its because they were trying to record him on the land line and that if they don't stay back, people will get hurt. Being the skilled negotiator that he is, OD immediately tells everyone to grab their gear because they are going to be making a full assault on Walter's position. He orders Waters to be sniper but Kellogg tells him that he's the best shot and should be the marksman. But no, OD is "mixing things up" only its not training, its a real life call. They deploy with two men rappelling down to the window with a sniper covering them from across the street while the remainder will breach in from the office door. As the best shot in the unit, Kellogg will of course be carrying the battering ram.
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"Just 15 floors to go Kellogg!"
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They breach in under cover of the weakest flashbangs in the world thrown by the rappelling team members and proceed....to do nothing as Walter has in fact had positioned himself so that he could have executed the two as they entered the room. OD is incompetent enough that he did not check those corners and the villain could have ended the movie in 3 seconds flat. We are not that lucky, so insteadWalter demands that they drop their weapons and leave. OD then proceeds to open up new negotiations with "Heya Walter, I'm the guy from the phone."
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"Are you for real? Did you get your FBI HRT certification in a cereal box?" |
After some painfully terrible negotiating on the part of Omega Douche while the hostage begs them to kill Walter, he orders the sniper to take the shot in a painfully obvious way, going so far as to tell the hostage to "Stop moving" after telling someone to call for an EMT unit for Walter. The sniper takes the shot but misses wide and as Walter aims to shoot the sniper who is staring dumbfounded at him, they tackle him and wrestle the gun out of his hand. OD laughs while telling Waters to try to aim a bit better next time because he's the worst person ever and the fact that Walter could have very well just killed someone is something he finds
funny.
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"Ahahahahaha! Oh man, the look on your faces!" |
Kellogg is still pretty pissed and tells him that he should have been the one shooting because he wouldn't have missed. OD tells him to shut up and secure the hostage. In a bizarre twist, the hostage grabs a gun and holds them hostage, demanding that they shoot Walter because he's a monster. So they draw their pistols and get into a Mexican standoff with the hostage they just rescued in an attempt to protect her hostage taker that they just tried to kill.
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"Man, we are terrible at this" |
They try to talk her down but OD couldn't negotiate getting his Big Mac without pickles and she proceeds to shoot herself in the head. Walter swears bloody vengeance against them for her death and we cut to OD moping around because this was the first hostage he has ever lost in 10 years in SWAT. This leads me to suspect that this was only his second call as his negotiating style is being smarmy, condescending and generally pissing off everyone he fucking talks to.
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"Hello Dominos, I would like a- What do you mean I can go fuck myself?" |
We then cut again to the rest of the team at the bar where Kellogg is mouthing off after too many drinks. He's pissed that he should have been the one taking the shot and while he's an asshole, he's perfectly right about it. OD assaulted someone rather than try to negotiate, spread his team too thin by making two of them rappel for absolutely no reason and putting the best shot on a job that doesn't require any kind shooting. In any kind of realistic scenario, he would at minimum be under suspension until a review was conducted. But nope, he shows up at the bar to get right up Kelloggs ass and challenges him to a contest. If Kellogg wins, he will leave town. If he wins, Kellogg is fired.
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In the morning, Kellogg will be sober but Cutler will still be a gigantic douche |
So they head over to a boxing arcade game that measures how strong you hit it. OD tells him to take his best shot and Kellogg hits it as hard as he can, scoring an 855. OD then grabs Kelloggs pistol and pistol whips the target as hard as he can scoring him a winning 937. Kellogg accuses him of cheating and OD gives a big speech about how you have to do anything you can to win in the world of SWAT and that Kellogg was a moron for not cheating first. Ignoring how utterly stupid that is (since he challenged Kellogg to
punch it), in any kind of sane movie this is the point in which the hero would pull a "I'm not going to fire you but your ass is mine" move where he puts the arrogant guy through his paces and makes him a better person. Omega Douche living up to his rank and station, instead immediately fires Kellogg, telling him to get his stuff out of his locker, he's off the force.
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And then he drinks Kellogg's beer because human suffering is delicious to him |
In the morning, the CO of SWAT is naturally pissed about a team leader betting a drunk man for his job. OD tries to defend his actions by saying that Kellogg is impulsive, reckless and doesn't listen to authority. For the sake of brevity I won't point out all of the extreme hypocrisy contained in this statement. The SWAT CO doesn't even have any part of that and points out that OD has zero authority to actually fire anyone from the Detroit police department. Unfortunately, instead of sending OD packing back home after writing up a formal complaint to whatever asshole certified this man, he moves Kellogg to another team and transfers in a female friend of OD's from Seattle.
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Patrol Officer Cheap Titillation |
The sad part is that I watched this movie several times and I still cannot tell you that her name is Lori without cheating. Its like that for everyone outside the "protagonist" and antagonist, they're all so incredibly vague that you start calling them things like "The female one", "Guy who eats things", "The black guy", "Blandy", "Baldy" and "Other, Bigger Baldy". Then later on when things start happening, the movie expects you to care about what happens to them but all you can do is go "No! Not....uh.....that guy!"
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From left to right: ????, ????, Kellogg, ????, Waters (I felt bad about calling him "The Black Guy") |
They head up to the top of the abandoned Projects and Lori gives a long winded filler speech about lessons learned in Iraq about speed shooting. Iraq it seems is the New 'Nam (Better tasting than Nam Classic!) when it comes to shallow characterization. They start practicing sniping but realizing that he hasn't been a dick in the last 3 minutes, OD decides its time for more of that innovative "training". He tells Baldy that sure he can hit the target when shooting properly, but how about
upside down? He forces him to flip over onto his back and tells him to shoot one of the targets in the ear. He misses the ear by a couple mm so OD and Lori brow beat him for not properly calculating the drop while upside down, saying he needs to do a lot better than that in the future. Think this is going somewhere and that this is going to prove important later? It absolutely doesn't, the movie is just wasting our time in order to pad itself while trying to show how "innovative" OD is.
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Innovative training! So innovative it has absolutely no use! |
Omega Douche is driving home from a hard day of being unlikable and wasting people's time when the movie looks at its watch, realizes its almost half over and decides holy shit, we need some actual plot. So OD gets a call from Walter, who tells him that because he caused the death of Rose, he's going to bring a whirlwind of death upon OD and everyone he-And then OD cuts him off by calling him an asshole and telling him he wasted his time calling before hanging up. Fantastic negotiation skills at work here. The next day, Walter shows up outside the police station and steals the Big Binder of Everyone's Weaknesses from a car using his own magic hacking device, in full view of the entire precinct.
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Pictured: Tactical Espionage Action |
Inside, Omega Douche finds out that Walter was given Movie Bail (IOW absolutely free to go) because he was actually the hostage in that particular hostage crisis as the 911 tapes and witness testimony has Rose pulling a gun on him and holding him hostage. Its never explained if this he altered the evidence or if OD went in completely blind without even listening to dispatch. Given what we know so far, I have to say that OD just absolutely sticking his dick in it is the more likely explanation. Regardless, because he has no criminal record, the fact that Rose killed herself after a history of suicidal tendencies and the fact he never fired a single shot, they let Walter go free. OD naturally does not tell anyone at all that the man called him up and threatened him over the phone and instead gets a date with the movies love interest on the literal condition that he stops annoying her.
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"I find your total lack of redeeming features oddly attractive for poorly written reasons" |
They go on a filler filled dinner date where they small talk about how they're both extremely flat characters before heading back to her place. They start making out and it segues to a sex scene right before seguing to Walter standing right outside the window watching them screw while ominous music plays. Walter Hatch likes to watch apparently. He then calls up a contact telling him to get to Detroit by 12pm the next day. They meet in a public park and Walter tells his man that they're going to do things "just like Belgrade".
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Staring off into space in opposite directions while standing an inch apart is how real spies try to pretend they're not talking to each other. |
We cut back to filler training missions being run by OD over the course of several days. The director looked at all his gun mounted cameras that he had going and said to himself "You know what would look great? Swinging these things around as fast as possible". I would show you what this looks like, but you would probably assumed I was accidentally uploading scans of Spirograph art. Instead after a couple days of motion sickness inducing camera work and jokes about getting Mesothelioma, OD heads home for the day only to find a giant flower funeral arrangement in his living room.
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Just like in Belgrade! Hahaha, man you should have seen Milosevic's face! |
Rather than say, alert his superiors about this and previous threats, Omega Douche heads down to the police station in the middle of the night to get Walter's personal information from the computers and takes off for his last known address listed. He picks the lock on the door of the house, creeps inside and hearing movement inside one of the rooms proceeds to kick the door down while yelling "I GOT YOUR MESSAGE ASSHOLE!"
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It is of course an old Asian couple who think that a dangerous lunatic has broken in to rob them. They are half right. |
After breaking nto their house based on a last known address without a warrant and pointing a gun at them, he tells them its alright because he's a police officer. He heads outside, leaving them to clean up their soiled bedsheets and gets a call from Walter mocking him for being such a fucking moron and telling him he'll come to his funeral before hanging up. OD checks his car and discovers a bomb attached. Finally realizing that he should probably get some assistance, he calls in support. When they arrive they say they tracked the signal to a nearby cell tower but its a prepaid phone. OD points at the sky and goes "Google Earth?". The CO sadly shakes his head and tells them that they tried that but the images were "ten hours out of date".
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Not sure if retarded or...no, that's just fucking retarded |
I'm...going to need a bit to recover from that. Check out Part 2 featuring the oddest cameo ever, coming soon...too soon....
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Talk to me Goose. |