Todesschwadron

Stoney Cooper (Hauser) is a private for-hire freelance inforcer that works in New York City, until he's hired back to his old stomping ground Los Angeles, to track down a serial killer. Dependable B-movie star Wings Hauser is fun in his lead "Dirty Harry" style role as a specialist at tracking down & capturing criminals. He's abit like a bounty hunter, but was once an LA cop until he lost his badge for his rogue ways & bad attitude. Hauser is fine as our lead, pure 80's, cop that reminded me of a dodgy version of David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider. In many ways Hauer's renegade, loose cannon & wild, risk taking cop was Martin Riggs before Lethal Weapon. There's similarities between Stoney Cooper & Martin Riggs, & it's not just the hair lol.

Wings is definitely B-movie royalty, with a huge filmography that's full of low-budget B-movie gems. Some of his i love are Nightmare at Noon, Mutant & Vice Squad, just to name a few. Wings is watchable because he's like an ordinary bloke, a blue collar guy with an attitude & he makes it fun. I really like Wings in films & often watch something because he's in it. Deadly Force is one of the best Wings Hauser films because he gets his own leading Cop Movie & he's having a ball with it.

Deadly Force is made by Paul Aaron who also made the early Chuck Norris action Classic A FORCE OF ONE.

I just love the 80's cop genre, especially the 80's buddy-cop genre, & consider it my favourite movie genre & my go-to comfort genre. I can loose myself in the movie world of 80's cop films, there's just such an energy to those old school films that i love. The 80's music, cheesy or not i love it all, the gritty backdrop to those films & the often bloody shootout action that follows. I love cop films & Deadly Force is a decent, fun one from that beautiful decade.

Deadly Force is filmed fine, the opening sequence in a beautiful sunny morning in Los Angeles is gorgeous Cinematography & then the more grittier look for New York, all shot well with fine 80's music to compliment the scenes. I totally dig the 80's music & neon lights & it's often, dark Death Wish 2 style tone. Los Angeles was a dangerous place in 1983, & Deadly Force embraced that fear. The serial killer in this is extremely deadly because he kills at random, each victim is different so there's no pattern. I really did like the look of the film the whole way through. At times Deadly Force felt very 70's, very early 70's cop thriller feel & then it would change to very 80's lively action cop flick. All in all i think Deadly Force is a fun & entertaining action cop thriller or, crime thriller. Routine at times yes, but 80's cop films all felt similar at times as they all kinda copied a formula, but i love it all.

There's other actors that support Wings Hauser of course, recognisable faces, but this is his leading movie & he made a fun cop character that should've atleast had one sequel.

A fun little bit-part for Estelle Getty from The Golders Girls, she's fun as a taxi driver.

Anyway tough & mouthy Stoney in let loose on the streets of Los Angeles, with gangsters & cops on his trail he doesnt stop until he finds his man.

There's nothing particularly special about Deadly Force, or anything that makes it really stand out from the cop thriller genre, but it's a fun film if you like the genre or if your a fan of Wings Hauser.

This is your usual cheap cop flick of the eighties, what makes this unusual is it's made before 84 when video retailers really kicked off here in the UK. Starring the amazingly named Wings Hauser it centres on a disgraced cop coming back home when he hears his friends daughter has been murdered by a serial killer. Being back home Stoney Cooper (Hauser), has to confront a hateful former police colleague and his estranged wife. There are decent pieces of this film especially when Hauser and his wife Eddie (Joyce Ingalls) are involved. But eventually it's a dadt thriller when it should've been better.

What we have here is a typical run-of-the-mill eighties crime/action/thriller from the somewhat lower budget regions. The plot involves a (very active) serial killer running amok in L.A. One of the apparently random victims, being killed at the very start of the movie, is the granddaughter of an ex-thief. Granddaddy then calls in the help of Stoney Jackson Cooper (Wings Hauser), a former hard-boiled cop from the L.A. police force who doesn't like playing by the rules. When he arrives in L.A., the authorities, local criminals as well as his (soon-to-be) ex-wife are not too happy with his return. But Stoney doesn't care. He's got a job to do and a promise to keep: track down the vile killer and put a stop to his activities.

The story bounces to the left & the right at an uneven pace, but still manages to be quite coherent and even turn in a twist at the start of the third act (albeit one you'll probably see coming). Wings Hauser is in top shape in this one and pretty much owns the movie. One scene has him relaxing in a bath tub, and then going after the killer butt-naked after the whole loft has been shot to pieces during the killer's surprise attack. Even a pretty decent but obviously very standard climax is added to the mix (Wings vs. the killer, after his true identity is exposed). Other forms of entertainment, aside from shooting & killing, are included also, like a soft-core sex-scene (Wings & Joyce Ingalls) and an obligatory car crash/explosion. Yes, "Deadly Force" does its best to play it right.

Sadly, one of the worst aspects of "Deadly Force" is the musical score. The main theme - if you can call it that - doesn't work at all. It's too rocky & funky and is used too often & inappropriately (even during the climactic fight & chase scene at the end). It gives the film a much sillier & dated vibe than it should have. A more gritty & tense analog synth score would have worked wonders, I'm sure. But in the end, "Deadly Force" is much more entertaining than it's poor rating on here would lead you to believe. And it's mainly thanks to Wings Hauser and a typical B-movie script that at least tries to make things work.

This movie drags terribly. I checked the time and couldn't believe I was only 38 minutes in and that there was over an hour left. Slow moving and thats more down to plot and the lengthy character development of Stoney Cooper. That didn't help.

The plot is good standard fare for an action movie. Ex cop turned private detective returns to LA where formerly served to solve the murder of a friend's daughter. He meets up with old enemies and his ex wife while things dont go as planned. The movie would have worked with a good healthy edit and better action sequences like the last one which didn't make sense. Alot of gloating to prolong it too long.

Might have been alot better with a good edit. Wings Hauser was good in the role. Also nice seeing Al Ruscio not playing the stereotypical bad guy for a change.

As said in my recent view for 'Vice Squad' (to me a very enjoyable film while not making me jumping out of my chair), if one looks at my other reviews, one would be very much forgiven if they thought that 'Deadly Force' wouldn't be my style or something that would typically be watched by me.

Once again, as said, actually my taste aims to be very diverse in film and television alike, spanning all genres and decades with a wide interest in actors, actresses and directors with no bias intended. There is certainly no bias against action crime/drama, there are some great films out there as well as some bad ones. 'Deadly Force', which was seen by me in the first place for Wings Hauser after such an amazing performance as one of the nastiest pieces of work in film in 'Vice Squad', is more a mediocre example than a bad one. It has its moments but its relative obscurity is understandable.

Starting off with the good things, Hauser while nowhere near as good as he is in 'Vice Squad' acquits himself well, he is very charismatic and gives his all. It is not his fault at all that his character here is not very interesting and is rather obnoxious, the blame lies squarely on the writing. The acting is mostly not very good, but two of the better performances come from Al Ruscio and Paul Shenar who also do a decent job making the most of their characters.

'Deadly Force' starts off reasonably well and is slick visually, although it does look a little too much like a made for television production. The rat roulette stuff is interesting.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cast don't make much of an impression. Joyce Ingalls is bland in a role that didn't strike me as particularly necessary with scenes felt like padding. On the other side of the acting spectrum, there is the very annoying Leon Kilpatrick in a role that is little more than a stock character spouting the oldest clichés in the book and the less said about Estelle Getty's truly bizarre cameo the better. The characters are not very interesting, ranging from the annoying (Stoney and Otto) and very sketchy (the villain/killer, and when one says sketchy they mean really sketchy).

The story is also a big issue. It's both overly simplistic and confused, while there is a lot of padding (especially the whole subplot with Stoney and Eddie which could have been cut out entirely because very little really is done with it and it was essentially padding) and the second half especially drags in a film that just doesn't have anywhere near enough content for the running time and often things happen far too conveniently. There is a lot of violence and action, but some of it is gratuitous and never that exciting or tense. It also comes at the expense of story and character development, while the climax is incredibly ordinary.

Editing can be chaotic and the direction is pretty sloppy. The dialogue is laughably cheesy, enough to probably not hold up that well in the 80s even. The music score just doesn't gel, constantly sounding like it was intended for another project entirely, and takes one out of the film, not even passing as a good score on its own because it sounds pretty cheap.

On the whole, has its moments and there are certainly far worse films that have more exposure but the film's title is not an appropriate one for one that lacks force. 4/10 Bethany Cox