S.W.A.T.: Operação Escorpião

It is a holiday, but Seattle SWAT member Travis Hall (Sam Jaeger) gets called into work. Commander Ellen Dwyer (Adrianne Palicki) has ordered a raid. DEA agents claim that it's an easy takedown of a drug shipment. Instead, they are confronted by a well-armed group and all they find is a mysterious prisoner (Michael Jai White) being tortured.

This has a solid premise and a couple of good actors. Michael Jai White depends on your personal taste. I find him a little cheesy but a fun take on those 90's action stars. Everything is set up for a good B-movie. Both the directing and production are second rate. Little things do start to bug me. There is plenty of action, but not all of it is staged well. I still like MJW doing his pose-fighting. I don't know if Palicki is doing her own stunts. She looks like she can really kick. This is a B-movie with a good premise. It's too bad that it struggles to pull it off.

What do you get when you assemble an amateur director and writers? S.W.A.T.: Under Siege

Sure this is a C-list, low production independent film, but it could have been much better, at least in a few areas. It seemed this was more of a failed low budget TV show production.

The story: done thousands of times - this being one of the worst The directing: amateur hour (and a half - run time). I have seen worse, but this film needed strong directing to get over all the other humps, and it wasn't there. The score: terrible. So bad in fact I noticed it every single time, and it did nothing to the scene but annoy me. Was it me, or did they try to get some of the original SWAT TV show jingle in there? The acting: atrocious - every single actor. Partial blame to the director, screenplay and casting director (see below). The editing: was there any? Where there was (fight scenes), it was too soon or too late. And for the first time, I will review two categories I've never reviewed before... casting & action choreography.

Casting: There was not even one actor that fit their character, especially the SWAT team. Since when are there that many women on any one SWAT team? Adrianne Palicki was the worst in her role, the most unconvincing, especially as the sexy (why?) Captain (fail). And Michael Jai White did not belong in this film, I could not stand that fake overly-deep voice he was trying to pull off.

Action Choreography (fight and gun-fight scenes ): the worst I have ever seen. Add to the fact the amateur directing and really bad editing, all the fight scenes were way too long and very fake and unconvincing. Michael Jai White is getting too old and out of shape for these type of films... he's no Jackie Chan, that's for sure. The girl cat-fight was the worst.

I expected more and got much less. Thank God it was only 1:29 min long. Don't waste your time with this unless you're really bored. Rating this film on its merits of a C-grade indie film, it's still only a 3/10.

"S.W.A.T.: Under Siege" should delete its writer's credit and replace it with a line crediting everybody who has written an action film in the past. The plot draws heavily from "Assault on Precinct 13" and "Safe House," with a lot of familiar tropes seen in dozens of genre films. What few mild surprises the plot offers generally happen off-screen, although it is not easy to predict which characters will die, who will kill whom and the order of their demises. The biggest surprise seems borrowed from "Showdown in Little Tokyo" and is surprising only because the film hadn't yet developed the characters – although, to their credit, it is a great improvement on the SILT scene. The bad guys who are really good and the good guys who are really bad could have simply worn T- shirts identifying themselves. The dialogue alternates between pretentious, execrable, familiar and unnecessary. Production values are generally adequate, although marred by over-reliance on distracting jiggly-cam shots.

However, the fight scenes are capably executed. Michael Jai White is highly proficient and other cast members demonstrate considerable skill as well, including Marsden, Zagorsky, Jaeger and Palicki. The fight choreography is competent, although uninspired. The special effects incorporated into the numerous gun battles are handled well.

Advocates of diversity in films should be encouraged by the ethnically diverse cast. However, skeptics will note that most of the Asian, Hispanic and black performers are in background roles and underutilized. The director seems to have attempted to give a couple of them more screen time with prolonged noble demises, but the shots seem more distracting than empowering. White delivers his dialogue with a heavy accent and another character is given an urban 'tude, but as in many films with large casts, the diversity seems more a result of casting decisions than screen writing choices.

The correct title is: S,W.A.T. - Ostromállapot The hun title featured here is for the movie SWAT-Firefight

OK, that's definitely not ASSAULT ON PRECINCT, nor NID DE GUEPES ( WASP NEST), even LES INSOUMIS, starring Richard Berry but on the same scale of GRIDLOCKED or BLACK SITE DELTA, schemes where police stations are under assault, a topic very often seen since John Carpenter's masterpiece, back in 1976. So, yes, it was a pretty good time for me, despite the bad acting and lousy directing. The army of mercenaries is laughable, they all look like football supporters rushing out of the stadium after the match to fight against the other team hooligans. Laughable, but I repeat, the basic scheme is not bad and Michael Jay White pretty good. By the way, I did not get if YES OR NOT, he died in the end. And what about the geek helping the baddies out with his computer...was he wasted or not? I guess so. Thanks Netflix for providing such films. There were so many looking like this one, i don't remember all of them, sorry. One last thing, I appreciated the way the couple of heavies - man and female - are presented, aboard the private jet, talking in a very intellectual way about the origins of the American Civil War, between North and South states taxes...Interesting for this kind of grade B films.