aloep

Before going any further, I may as well make this short and sweet. Raw Justice is awful. In every angle it's cheap and trashy. It is however, hilariously awful and I'd like to recommend it for that very reason.

In the opening scene Mace (David Keith) is out to bust some guy who's just jumped bail. He could have easily have kicked the door open and shown him the gun and the cuffs. But no, this guy doesn't like conventional methods so he decides to "borrow" some clothes from a hooker so he can enter the room as a hooker for reasons unknown. Somehow this genius plan doesn't go smoothly and the bail jumper manages to make a run for it, and what follows is a foot chase with David Keith dressed in drag. Ho ho ho! Funny, right?

Meanwhile, Mitch McCullum (Robert Hays) has just had a one-night stand with the Mayor's daughter. After dropping her off at her home, Deputy Mayor Bob Jenkins (Stacy Keach) orders some hit-man to kill her, not before showing us her rubbing herself repeatedly as she showers nude. After performing the hit and stealing some computer floppy disks, Jenkins decides not to pay him, but rather to kill him instead. Turns out Jenkins is fed up being Deputy, and wants promotion. So in order to live his dream, he decides that killing Mayor David Stiles' (Charles Napier) daughter who was currently writing a book, adding a chapter about incest to her book then threatening Stiles that if he doesn't resign his position as Mayor in his next speech, he'll release the book to the public. Wow! Why did nobody else ever think of a great plan like that before?! The way this movie handles it is even worse. It just doesn't know where to go.

Mayor Stiles hires Mace to investigate, as apparently a loose cannon is exactly what he needs. He meets up with Mitch, the guy who had the one night stand and was initially accused of the murder and the two reluctantly team up and get involved in a couple of shootouts, a crappy car chase, a barfight and a swamp boat chase with hit men and corrupt cops all appearing out of nowhere. As for Pamela Anderson, her character is completely detached from the main plot and the reason for shoehorning her into it is the lamest thing. She plays the hooker whose clothes Mace takes at the start. During the middle of the movie, Mace bumps into her by coincidence and she's angry because he left her outside in her underwear and never returned her clothes. During her whining, bad guys pop up and shoot at our heroes. Now she's been seen with them, she's now part of it and can't be let go.

Yeah, I know...

Just prior to the Mayor's speech, our heroes have just won a barfight. Mace presses corrupt cop Atkins (Leo Rossi) for information as to who he's working for, he gives in and says he's working for Deputy Mayor Bob Jenkins. Mace doesn't even interrogate him for any more information, all he gets is a name before Atkins goes for his gun and is killed, so the only evidence they have against Jenkins is the word of a now deceased cop who our heroes have killed.

So the Mayor's speech has now begun, and if he doesn't resign his position, Jenkins will release the edited book to the public. Instead, he announces that Jenkins is responsible for the murder of his daughter. Jenkins responds by claiming that Stiles had her killed when suddenly our heroes enter the room in and Mace says "I don't think so. Atkins talked". Jenkins then goes insane and takes Stiles hostage. Now, the only evidence they have against Jenkins is one name from a deceased cop who the heroes have killed. What evidence is there that they're even the good guys? Despite his original plan being idiotic, the evidence against Jenkins was minimal so I see no reason at all for him to have taken hostages. He's so unbelievably stupid it's a wonder how he obtained his position as deputy mayor in the first place.

But it gets worse. Jenkins escapes to the roof with his hostage and demands a helicopter. A helicopter appears and after taking off the pilot turns round and it's revealed to be Mace. Yeah, like they're going to give a chopper to some burnt out ex cop. He jumps out into the river and leaves the helicopter with Jenkins to crash into a skyscraper which would not only cause a huge amount of property damage but would seriously endanger innocent civilians both on the ground and in the building. In reality this guy would have been arrested and thrown in jail to rot, here not only does he get off without so much as a slap on the wrist, the mayor has "straightened things out" with him because of this wonderful act of courage!

David Keith is just woeful. Not only does he look awful, but manages to make his character as repulsive and unlikeable as possible. He basically rapes Pamela Anderson's character just after a shootout. Robert Hays is not as bad as Keith but that's not saying much. Reliable B-movie veterans Charles Napier, Stacy Keach and Leo Rossi are wasted. Pamela Anderson has absolutely no reason for being there other than to have two long and boring sex scenes. Her acting is atrocious and her line delivery is at times hilarious, especially in the scene where she tries to comfort Mitch who's feeling sorry for himself by telling him "I think you're being a bit hard on yourself".

Overall, this is awful but I highly recommend anyone who loves bad movies to check it out. I could go on, but I have a minimum of 1000 words! User "bob the moo" took it way too seriously!

My expectations for this weren't high as it was directed by veteran hack Art Camacho and the trailer looked awful. And it was more or less as bad as I expected but I felt compelled to check it out anyway because of the number of well known B-movie stars in the cast. The script is horribly clichéd, "One who lives by the rules, one who lives to break them", Don "The Dragon" Wilson's performance for the most part was terrible and he's starting to move a lot slower with age, his fights are poorly choreographed also. Olivier Gruner has improved quite a bit with time in both his acting and his English and did a passable job in the tired role as the clichéd "play by his own rules" cop. Diana Kauffman is sexy as the protected witness, but that's about all I can say in her favour and it's not remotely convincing when she finds herself attracted to an ageing Don "The Dragon" Wilson.

The action is all extremely poor. Much of it consists of small scale shootouts where the bad guys fire, good guys fire back, bad guys fall etc. where in some cases it's difficult to see who's shooting who. The fight scenes aren't good, Olivier Gruner fights much more naturally than Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who's fight scenes are so badly cut that it's very hard to see what's going on. The opening fight scene with him is particularly awful, I could have done better with the right choreographer and he was "arguably the best kickboxer in the world".

While a supporting cast of Fred Williamson, Martin Kove and Gary Busey may look appealing on paper it's best to go with the old "Never judge a book by it's cover" in this case. Fred Williamson spends his time in one motel room in the opening scene and is shot after a few minutes. Gary Busey is one of the central characters but spends all of his screen time sitting in an office until towards the end when he walks into a parking lot, gets in a car, turns the key in the ignition and it cuts to a stock footage shot of a BMW exploding in a cobbled street which is very obviously somewhere in Eastern Europe. The shot is taken from Mission Impossible and was shot in Prague, yet this movie is set and filmed in Los Angeles. There are even Ladas and other Eastern European cars visible, not to mention the fact that there aren't even any cobbled streets or historic architecture in LA. You can also clearly see that the car Busey gets into is directly facing a wall. The BMW that explodes is sitting in the middle of a wide cobbled street. The fact that easily spotted errors were left in the film proves how little even the crew cared as you would think that they could have found stock footage which at least matched the location. Martin Kove appears in one scene in the first quarter, then appears at the end only to get shot dead. I've still not worked out a good reason for the existence of this character in the film other than to add a little more B-grade "star power" to the front cover.

Two CGI explosions. One mismatched stock footage explosion. Minimal property damage. Several poorly choreographed fight scenes. Lots of boring gunfights.

On DVD in the USA now as "Crooked" with a price tag of around $20. Fans of Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Olivier Gruner, Gary Busey, Fred Williamson or Martin Kove may think they're somehow obliged to check it out anyway. I have only got two things to say: "you're not" and "don't". I suggest you avoid it like a bubonic rat.