Badge of Honor

Taut police Internal Affairs investigation. Great production and acting. What is missing is any real crime scene investigation which would have taken the story in a different direction. Instead the relationships between almost everyone involved become the focus. The movie is the better for it but you have to forget about the forensics.

Summary: This film is fantastic. Deserves a much better rating than it currently has on IMDb (4.7). Don't see why this movie's average rating is not at least a 7.

Comments:

The rare movie with an empowered, non-hypersexualized female lead character, whose humanity is the most important thing about her, not merely that she is a female. She is not fetishized nor relegated to caring only about relationships with men, nor does she need to be rescued by a "big strong man" to do all the dirty work for her. Rather, she is capable of doing anything any human person can do, but what in cinema is often reserved for males alone, such as wielding worldly power, being emotionally tough, and perhaps most importantly, simply being independent. It is not enough to merely put a gun in a female character's hand and let her shoot someone, and then celebrate the movie as non-sexist. Not if said female character is still portrayed as utterly relationally dependent on men, as usually happens in such movies. Not here.

In line with this, the movie takes a far more realistic, compassionate approach to how it portrays human relationship, character, and choice, rather than the macho, male-dominant, "shoot/beat up everyone and make it better" tropes in so many other movies with similar subject matter. It actually takes the time to show the plot from the point of view of all the characters, female or male, adult or child, powerful or powerless, "glamorous" or ordinary. One example being a gunshot victim's sister. Just an ordinary kid, no reason the movie has to include her at all, but it does, because this movie cares about the human element. In this regard Badge of Honor is very reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's best directorial work, such as "Gran Torino" and "Unforgiven".

... but only if you are a casting director looking to find a formerly A-list actor who has the chops but has not been getting the roles needed to show off her skills.

The rest of the film is basically a clinic in how to make a sub-B indie product:

1. Pull together some actors who are slightly past their BEST BY date and will work cheap.

2. Lay down the heaviest sound track you can, because everyone knows that deficiencies in the production (direction, lighting, acting, scripting) can be "hidden" if the viewer is distracted by a heavy sound track.

3. Shoot the entire film in as much natural light as you can. If anyone complains, call it "authentic". Others of course might just call it "dark." This saves a lot of money.

4. Speed up all the action scenes just a little, maybe by dropping a few frames here and there. This makes the action look faster and cooler than it actually is.

5. (Optional) If you are the director and writer, give yourself a one-word name -- like Madonna -- so that viewers will remember your work and avoid it in the future

Finally, for the record, Martin Sheen is one of my all time faves but PA-LEEZE to imagine he can still play a professional, active-duty, cop at 75 years of age almost qualifies this film as Science Fiction.

All the scenes in the movie and the story,u would have seen it all before, most of the time done better than how it's done in this movie. But still this movie is very watchable and had some interesting parts. The acting in this movie is solid too. Not award material but for what they are given,i think the actors have done a very good job. Lochyln Munro ,especially,was really good in his role. He seemed so involved and committed to his role and it shows in his performance. The director could have directed his scenes better though and maybe build a little more character arc for him. And they could have also used Martin Sheen more. I didn't like the climax much as it seemed rushed but other than that i think it's a good enough movie that u can rent and watch or if u happen to catch this movie on TV,it's worth spending some free time on.

OK for a got-nothing-else-to-do movie. Whomever was in charge of writing stuff in this film needs spelling classes ASAP. Apart from the "Assualt" mistake in the report, the Credits at the end are FULL of errors: The character appears as "Jocob", another one is "Smauel". Then there are three "Sunt Doubles", an "Add'l Firs Assistant B Camera", an "Assitant Costume Designer" and a "Set Cosumers Supervisor". I'm sure there are other goofs I didn't catch, especially among the First and Last Names of people involved in the movie. One positive thing about the movie is FINALLY using people who really do speak Spanish playing the roles of Latinos something Hollywood, completely surrounded by people from Central and South America doesn't usually do. Maybe it was Martin Sheen's influence or that Agustin's ear would hurt from the bad Spanish found in most American movies. Unfortunately, the director wasn't the right person to check the credits or assign that job to whomever did it.