Extreme Justice - Ein Cop nimmt Rache

(the following review/comment is my own personal opinion)i found this movie entertaining.it is pretty fast paced and never really lets up.it's basically about an elite group of cops whose sole purpose is to tail the bad guys and learn their routine.then the nab them in the act.this sometimes results in people being victimized so they can have an air tight case against the bad guys.but the squad becomes more of a vigilante group,taking on the role of judge,jury and executioner.the movie is apparently based on a real squad that still exists today.but the events and the characters in the movie are fictional.there is fair amount of violence in this movie and a some pretty crude language.it's a pretty standard paint by numbers action/crime drama,but i think the acting performances elevated it quite a bit.Lou Diamond Phillips and Scott Glenn are the two main actors,but there are some great supporting performances.for me,Extreme Justice is a 7/10.

Mark L. Lester has directed some of the most enjoyably trashy movies ever ("Roller Boogie," "Class of 1984," "Gold of the Amazon Women" etc.), mostly working in the low-budget direct- to-video or TV movie realm though he briefly entered the mainstream with the Stephen King adaptation "Firestarter" and Stallone vehicle "Commando." I haven't seen much of his more recent work, but always perk up when I see his name on a DVD or old VHS tape--his movies are sometimes ridiculous but they're almost always energetic and entertaining.

This is actually one of his more respectable efforts, as it's a fairly effective indictment of police corruption that was made at a time when LAPD was under close scrutiny for just that. Lou Diamond Phillips plays a conscientious (but incongruously long-haired) young police officer recruited to a special unit, teamed with his mentor Scott Glenn. They're assigned to track down serial murderers, rapists and robbers, but somehow every time they apprehend the bad guys, all the perps and usually a few innocent bystanders end up dead--the whole squad is way too trigger-happy, esp. Glenn. Phillips gets increasingly uncomfortable with this, leading to the inevitable tension (a la the later "Training Day") between cop veteran and newbie partner.

Both leads are good, the violent action is solidly handled, and the movie is less campy but no less fun than many of Lester's other films. It's nothing great, but it's a solid "B" flick.

Fans of good action films will find "Extreme Justice" to their liking. What elevates this police special squad film above the competition, is the interesting and effective cast. You rarely see Scott Glenn, Lou Diamond Phillips, Ed Lauter, and Yaphet Kotto all together in one exciting movie. Ethical questions aside, "Extreme Justice" delivers the death squad justice in massive doses. If you are a fan of any of the above actors, then seek this one out, because you will not be disappointed. My only objection is that the female lead, Chelsea Field, playing a snoopy reporter, is rather bland, cold, and ultimately forgettable. - MERK

Here's a film that was a warm welcomed surprise. If you want to be entertained, get Mark Lester to do it. And when you have great actors like Glenn and Phillips as the leads, you know you're in for surefire entertainment. Here, it's more explosive entertainment, in a well polished and slick actioner about loose vigilante justice, only the justice here is wearing a badge. SIS is Special Investigation Section, a secret division of cops, who are out to take out the worst high profile offenders, ready at the assigned locale, for when they strike, only we have more murders than arrests. Losing his cool with a scummy piece of s..t, undercover cop, Jeff Powers (Phillips) is the latest to join Glenn's warm posse of cops, but being a witness to long time friend, Glenn's reckless actions, puts a strain on the work relationship, where soon at first hand, Jeff begins to see the real truth about this organization. The films has great shootouts and action, brilliantly staged, with no dull moment to spare. Chelsea Field, a really good actress, plays Phillip's older girlfriend, an avid reporter, out to bust this squad. The last scene, a stand off between Glenn and Phillips, where all out war is declared, is my favorite. Have to viddy this surprisingly well made film again. To bag this film, you'd have to be a bit off. Great, exciting entertainment, based on real incidents. Watch.

The low user rating on here is quite dichotomous to the actual quality of the film itself.

Not to be confused with Walter Hill's timeless action-Westerner, Extreme Prejudice, Extreme Justice is a fairly straight-to-the-point action flick that wasn't made to horde awards. It's no high-brow art piece, not by any stretch of the definition, but it is highly entertaining and moves at a rapid clip from start to finish.

I'm not going to rehash the description of the film, but I will say that story-wise it's interesting for what it is but the execution is 100% cliché. You can see the ending coming a mile away, but how it gets there is what makes it such a fun watch.

There are shootouts sprinkled all throughout the film from start to finish. There's hardly ever a dull moment. The one leading female character even manages to strip down early in the film for some not-too-gratuitous fan-service. Something that we rarely see in action movies today.

What's interesting about this film, though, is that it feels more like it came out of the late 1980s rather than the early 1990s.

There's like a checklist of typical 1980s bad-action movie tropes that the film fulfills, but it's all done in a great and entertaining way. For instance, each of the shootouts are chock-full of unconventional street weaponry, especially used by the S.I.S., squad. The results from these shootouts are always bloody and borderline gory.

In this way, Extreme Justice taps into the short-lived 1980's ultra-violence run that took Hollywood by storm before Conservative bench-warmers on the church pews and concerned Liberal Democrats took to the congressional halls to bemoan Hollywood and television's obsession with gun violence.

If you're a fan of top-notch squibbing the likes of which would make Paul Verhoeven nod in approval, and a shoot-first, ask-later style approach to the action sequences (many of which may as well have come straight out of the Death Wish series) then you're definitely going to find Extreme Justice enjoyable.