Just above average action-thriller, nothing else

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2004)

This is pretty much a typical action-thriller; there are car-chases and shootouts, pretty much every major character utters at least a few one-liners or badass tough-guy lines, etc. You know how it goes. And of course, even though the two groups(Marines and SEAL, respectively) are highly trained military, they make the same mistakes that the military always does in Hollywood action films; throwing grenades with enough time to allow them to be thrown back, run in a straight line away from someone shooting at point blank range with automatic weapons(and surviving without a scratch, of course), half of the time standing in bad cover while shooting, while disregarding the enemy's great cover, etc. This is nothing new to these films, it just annoys me that films are made with so many blatant mistakes made by supposed professionals. It's a bad excuse to do this just because of the action-scenes; look at S.W.A.T.; in every way an average action film, but stays clear of all of the stupid mistakes, yet manages to produce some great action nonetheless. The humor in the film consists entirely of characters acting tough and spouting(mostly bad) one-liners and the likes. The plot is recycled from hundreds of other films like it, many of them better. They just changed the setting and played around with a few details. It has a decent pace, but nearly the entire first half was fairly uninteresting. The last half was reasonably good, but that was when the military mistakes started to appear. The acting is mostly good, and the choice of actors is definitely something the film benefits from; tough guys include Tony Todd of the Candyman series, John C. McGinley and Ed Harris, all three of them being very cool and typical tough guys. The characters are reasonably well-written, but far too many of them are just there to pose an immediate threat, be killed off later by one of our two heroes, or simply spout the infamous one-liners. The action is fairly exciting, but too much of the time, you'll find yourself being distracted and annoyed(well, I was, at least) at the huge number of unrealistic details and(yes, once again) military mistakes. All in all, just a standard, slightly above average action-thriller, and absolutely nothing else. I recommend it to fans of one of the actors, main character or minor, and fans of the genre in general. Just don't expect it to blow you away; only expect to be mildly entertained by something that there's a good chance you've seen before, possibly more well-made. 6/10