Todesschwadron

"Deadly Force" has everything you would expect from a cop kicked off the force film, and that is the problem. Wings Hauser is the renegade cop investigating a series of apparently random homicides, committed by perhaps the least developed, and least interesting villain in screen history. The overly simplistic story really has nowhere to go, so it is well padded with gratuitous car chases and explosions. I will say however, this is the first time I have seen the game of "rat roulette" played, and it looks more interesting than the rest of "Deadly Force". This strictly by the book action film might be worth a look for Wings Hauser fans but others beware. - MERK

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.

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

A customarily vanilla, but rather violent and tawdry action thriller joint with a colourfully explosive Wings Hauser performance as an ex-cop returning to Los Angeles to find the serial killer that murdered his friends' granddaughter. He's a rogue who believes the system doesn't work and would go about any way to get the job done ("Your crazy man!"). Because of this, he's not welcome by the local authorities, then there's the ex-wife and also the local criminals who he had a past with when he was a LA cop.

There's no surprises here, but it's well made in workman-like manner by director Paul Aaron ("A Force of One"). Fundamental is how you can describe the b-grade story, but it did somewhat change route in the back-end after what I thought was going to be your typical stalk and slash outing with a (ex-maverick) cop after a psycho serial killer. In away I probably would have preferred if stuck to that formula (something similar to Charles Bronson's "10 to Midnight"), then where it actually headed. Even the added love-interest with Joyce Ingalls's character felt like nothing more than padding. The narrative does have a scattered pattern going on, but everything is thinly examined when it comes to its finale. Pacing can be very uneven, but the action is physically tough and breakneck (as well as that pumping soundtrack)… but you end up wishing there were more extreme dynamics than what's produced. Also showing up in the cast is Paul Shenar, Al Ruscio, Lincoln Kilpatrick and Arlen Dean Snyder.

Middle-of-the-road entertainment.

"You leave L.A, I'll have your ass!"

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.