The started out OK, if cliché-ridden and cheesy in its choice of plot line. Cuba Gooding, for all his merits, does not stand up as a convincing street personality. His gutless and blowhard portrayal must have been in part intentional due to the 'tryhard' nature of his character needlessly revealed by his colleague, but was he really supposed to show up as that pathetic? His character came across as fake in the Nth degree, and never once did I take him seriously. Clifton Collins, Jr is marginally better, often because he opens his mouth less, and the captain (praised in another review)? As soon as he said something about it being a 'war' out there, I knew the script would never allow even a passably meaningful performance to emerge.
I come from London and have spent plenty of time in the army as well, listening to glorious bouts of expletive ridden verbal diarrhoea, so listening to the uninspired tourette's-like motherf****r tirades where the aforementioned crops up every other word seems confusing and pointless, rather than real. If anybody really talks in that way in LA, I feel truly sorry for them - all that wasted effort.
The story was predictable and telegraphed, with not even an ounce of the plotting sophistication that made 'Training Day' a surprisingly good film on the first watch. In my view, Training Day didn't take itself too seriously, thus making the more cartoonish elements of the plot bearable, but this one just serves to annoy after a while with its preachy nature and attempts to be a serious and hard hitting flick.
About the time of Russian roulette, I became too embarrassed to watch any more of this garbage, and turned it off , as I found (not to my surprise) that I really didn't give a monkeys what would happen to the gangsters/policeman, or anyone else. The person I feared most for was myself, as a morning viewing meant that I could have been quietly cursing for the rest of the day about the loss of precious hours.
Just Don't.
I come from London and have spent plenty of time in the army as well, listening to glorious bouts of expletive ridden verbal diarrhoea, so listening to the uninspired tourette's-like motherf****r tirades where the aforementioned crops up every other word seems confusing and pointless, rather than real. If anybody really talks in that way in LA, I feel truly sorry for them - all that wasted effort.
The story was predictable and telegraphed, with not even an ounce of the plotting sophistication that made 'Training Day' a surprisingly good film on the first watch. In my view, Training Day didn't take itself too seriously, thus making the more cartoonish elements of the plot bearable, but this one just serves to annoy after a while with its preachy nature and attempts to be a serious and hard hitting flick.
About the time of Russian roulette, I became too embarrassed to watch any more of this garbage, and turned it off , as I found (not to my surprise) that I really didn't give a monkeys what would happen to the gangsters/policeman, or anyone else. The person I feared most for was myself, as a morning viewing meant that I could have been quietly cursing for the rest of the day about the loss of precious hours.
Just Don't.