Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Tactical Force Blu-ray Movie Review

SWAT this one away like a pesky fly.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 4, 2011

Not to state the obvious, but being a police officer is very dangerous work, and no amount of training can prepare policemen and policewomen for every conceivable confrontation which might come their way. Even extensive training can sometimes go awry, as recent reports from my hometown of Portland have proven. A policeman, attempting to subdue a man who has been described as mentally unstable, thought he was firing non lethal rubber bullets at the erratically behaving individual. Only the policeman had inadvertently loaded his rifle with live ammunition, causing serious wounds to the man, who the last I read was still hospitalized. Of course, that’s probably an extreme example, but it gives some indication of snafus that can confront even the most seasoned peace officer. Almost the exact opposite situation confronts the cops of Tactical Force, a completely silly if sometimes momentarily exciting cat and mouse game pitting a Los Angeles SWAT team on a training mission (with no live ammunition) against two marauding groups of high end criminals, each with a battery of various equally high end weapons at their beck and call. Tactical Force is a film which strains credulity so far beyond the breaking point that it’s almost ridiculous to even mention the coincidences, synchronicities, and supposed plot “twists” that populate its rather brief running time. This is a film that is more or less about guns, usually very loud guns, as well as a few viscerally exciting hand to hand combat scenes courtesy of star Steve Austin. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen a thousand (maybe a million) times before in any number of police films and television shows, not the least of which would be the long running series (later made into a feature film) S.W.A.T.. What’s a little troubling in this film is how the SWAT team is at least partially played as kind of bumbling, hyperkinetic semi-idiots, cops who mean well but who can’t help but kill and maim as they attempt to get their daily quota of bad guys put behind bars. It’s hard to serve and protect when it seems more than apparent that the public at large needs protecting itself from cops like this.

Tactical Force plays out more or less like you would expect it to, with perhaps one or two brief exceptions. That predictability begins with the opening sequence, where we’re first inundated by overwhelming, thump-heavy hip hop as we witness a convenience store robbery in progress. Now this being a hyperbolic police drama, the bad guys don’t just waltz in and demand the cash in the till, they burst through the doors wearing Halloween masks and carrying sawed off shotguns and proceed to threaten all the customers in the place. A call is made to a close-by SWAT team (how convenient), led by cool as a cucumber Tate (Steve Austin). Tate manages a motley crew of three other tactical officers, and they show up to a scene where hostage negotiators are attempting to defuse the situation. Of course Tate will have none of that and rips the police phone out of the negotiator’s hand and informs one of the bad guys that he’s coming in. What ensues is a typically over the top melee where the bad guys aren’t just contained, they’re decimated, along with the convenience store.

Before the SWAT team shows up at this “restricted” site, we get two competing groups of mobsters showing up to try to reclaim some lost booty which has evidently been stashed there. We have Russians and we have Italians, just so some fledgling SAG members can work on their dialects. But, really, let’s think about this for just a moment. If this is a “staging” area for SWAT training, wouldn’t that make it police property? Or at least better contained and guarded than a wide open facility where international criminals are able to stash their goods? But while these competing groups of hoods are fighting amongst themselves about how to find the stashed goods, our intrepid heroes show up and “just for fun” turn on the siren “cause it’s cool.” That of course leads the bad guys to believe they’re about to be rounded up and jailed, and so the games begin.

Tactical Force is a film that absolutely screams “direct to video,” with an attendant low fidelity ethos that actually works pretty well for a film like this with extremely modest ambitions. Austin is fine if uninspired, but it’s odd that a film of this sort doesn’t exploit his fighting skills more than Tactical Force does. Also on hand are Michael Jai White as another one of the SWAT team and Michael Shanks as one of the bad guys, and they’re similarly fine, if uninspired. Writer-director Adama P. Cultraro does surprisingly well in the director’s chair but falls embarrassingly short in his guise as a scenarist. In fact Tactical Force looks absolutely swell most of the time, with extremely well staged action sequences and some inventive framings livening up the otherwise cliché-ridden proceedings.

Ultimately Tactical Force tries to be a goofy action thriller a la The Expendables but its own ridiculousness undercuts it at every turn. Even stopping for a moment to ponder any of the many imponderables that dot this film at virtually every turn is yet another reason for the suspension of disbelief to come crashing down around the viewer. And even the film’s supposed big “twist” at the end is another patently silly exercise in Screenwriting 101. If this ostensible “surprise” is considered for even a moment, most are going to be asking (without posting any big spoilers), “Why is this character even here saying this stuff? If this character really wanted a secret to be kept, wouldn’t this character just have kept their mouth shut and wandered off into the filmic sunset?” But that’s the major problem with Tactical Force—when the audience has the time and wherewithal to even think about these kinds of questions, it means the film isn’t doing the one job it should be: entertaining.

Tactical Force Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

You may not think much of Tactical Force as a film, but you probably will be pleasantly surprised by this Blu-ray's VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Filmed digitally with a Red Camera, this is a nicely sharp, often coolly filtered, outing that has a slate gray to ice cold blue look a lot of the time. While the texture of Tactical Force is that digital shiny smooth ambience that drives some people crazy, it actually pops quite nicely for most of this film, and best of all despite the intentional filtering, contrast and black levels remain quite strong and consistent, especially important as large swaths of the film take place in the shadowy nooks and crannies of the warehouse. Fine detail is abundant, especially in close-ups and overall the film boasts a nicely precise image with few if any artifacts marring the presentation.

Tactical Force Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tactical Force is a very sonically busy film and the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track included on this Blu-ray gets a pretty consistent workout from the first moment to the last. Surround activity is often boisterous, especially in the many (and I do mean many) moments of gunfire and other action. Sound effects are very artfully placed around the soundfield, and fidelity is excellent, especially with regard to the piercing sounds of bullets pummeling various body parts, and a couple of large scale explosive conflagrations also easily rattle the floorboards. Dialogue is well handled and well mixed into the proceedings. I personally could have done with a bit less of the hip hop music accompanying some of the scenes, but at least that, along with the many foley effects accompanying the action sequences, provides the film with some fulsome LFE.

Tactical Force Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Inside Tactical Force (Featuring Steve Austin, Michael Jai White and Keith Jardine) (HD; 10:39). With a film this predictable, would you expect anything other than a standard issue EPK-fest with interviews and behind the scenes footage? If so, you shouldn't.
• Fight Sequence (HD; 2:18) is an okay montage of the various fight sequences in the film, which begs the question as to why this extra is named with a singular.
• Trailer (HD; 1:20)

Tactical Force Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Tactical Force is mindless entertainment and if you come to it with absolutely zero expectations, it at the very least provides a lot of noise and action if not a lot of sense, plot mechanics or character development. This film simply has too many flaws in basic logic to ever overcome, and that may lead even ardent action aficionados to be rolling their eyes and exhaling heavy sighs too frequently to ever really enjoy the film at any level. As a director, Cultraro certainly has an eye for action sequences and Tactical Force looks fantastic. Cultraro the director simply needs to hire a better writer than Cultraro next time.