Clevercell Very disappointing...

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Leofwine_draca This routine action thriller never breaks the boundaries - instead happy to follow in the footsteps of countless older brothers. Yes, it's the old cop corruption routine again, going back all the way to SERPICO in the early '70s. This serviceable flick has some good action bits and some lame "bonding" scenes - just as you would expect, really.One thing the film has in its favour is the cast, with loads of familiar faces in major roles. Thomas Ian Griffith, who you may recognise as the chief vampire Valek in Carpenter's VAMPIRES, is a pretty much wooden action hero. In his favour he's very tall which makes him imposing - check out that vampire film - but his action? Well, it just looks like he's taken up martial arts at college, there is no particular grace in his moves, they're just realistic-looking.Lance Henriksen enjoys himself in a villainous turn, but doesn't come close to the entertaining nastiness he exudes in the same year's HARD TARGET. Also popping up are James Earl "Darth Vader" Jones, in his patented crusty old good guy role, and Tony Todd, who has spent the last two decades acting his way through a million straight-to-video flicks. Burt Young also gets a brief opportunity to chew the scenery.Aside from the action, this is typical stuff, with some gratuitous nudity thrown in for good measure. The action itself is sometimes brutal (although it was trimmed, as I saw this on television), and a refreshing amount of bad guys get taken care of. There are also some explosions and some shooting bits to keep things moving along. Okay, so EXCESSIVE FORCE is nothing special, but it passes the time and could have been a lot worse. Let's just think of something new next time, guys...

Prismark10 With the success of Steven Seagal in the late 1980s. Thomas Ian Griffith was touted as the next action star. He had been in Karate Kid 3, knew his martial arts and had fair amount of acting experience.To stroke his ego, Excessive Force was written by him as well. He plays McCain a maverick Chicago cop obsessed with taking down mobster Sal DiMarco (Burt Young) but he always outwits the cops with smart lawyers and the police using excessive force when taking him down.However DiMarco's guys lose a case with three million dollars in an incident with the police and DiMarco thinks McCain and his team stole it and he sends his goons.McCain and his girlfriend go on the run as bodies start to pile up including his partner and best friend. Police Chief Devlin (Lance Henriksen) never happy with McCain's methods has given him the wink to go after the baddies. However when DiMarco ends up dead he becomes the prime suspect and finds out a more complex web of police corruption.The plus side is Griffith is a decent enough actor. Not only is his character a hot headed cop with martial arts skills, he can also play jazz piano. The film also has some good support actors with James Earl Jones, Young and Henriksen.There is also some intense violent scenes at the beginning of the film and at least a little bit of plotting even if it is rather clichéd. I just thought it lacked something special and one of which was some good, exciting martial arts action. I thought the fight choreography was weak and it seems Griffith lacked a unique selling point in what was already a crowded martial arts action market.

swedzin I really enjoyed this film. But not because of his action scenes, which action-crime films usually offers. The strongest edge of this film is acting crew. I mean, check it out: Thomas Ian Griffith (known from "Karate Kid 3" and "Vampires", the leading man here, he did a fine job, but on some moments pretty shallow performance, nevertheless, he is good), Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Alien 3, AVP, OK, no surprises here, this commanding and great actor appeared in many low budget films, so it's not surprising at all), Charlotte Lewis ("Pirates" and "Men of War", well, I think she was chosen because of her beauty, nothing more), Burt Young (Rocky films, he is a good actor and I usually expected him in supporting roles in big budget films), W. Earl Brown ("Deadwood", he is great, and this was one of his first works), Tony Todd ("Candyman", great, scary actor, known for his trade mark height and deep, spooky voice, well, he appeared in most of these low budget films, so it's not surprising at all) and James Earl Jones ("Star Wars", now... I was really confused about him here, what a hell? How did he get here, the best actor in the film... in such low budget film, well, maybe he liked the crew too). And I think that acting crew is the best thing in this film and it's worth watching because of it.Now, when it comes to script and plot, it's an average revenge seeking film, I mean this film was really unknown, and yet they put a challenging taglines like "Meet the new contender", "In 70s, we had Bruce Lee, 80s Chuck Norris and now in 90s... meet the new guy", all that exaggerated claims... and in the end... no luck. I think that Griffith is a good actor and a good martial artist, but this kind of movies can't do much for you... If you are a fan of these kind of films, you can easily enjoy it.

bob the moo Terry McCain and his team of Chicago police officers bust up part of mob boss Sal DiMarco's operations. The trial falls through due to the use of excessive force, but $3000000 from the bust goes missing. When DiMarco kills both McCain's partners in an attempt to get the money back, McCain goes after him but decides to spare his life. The next day DiMarco is found dead and McCain realises that there are crooked people around him who are using him to do their dirty work and that they'll soon need to kill him to tidy it all up.Seeing the cast list in my TV guide I assumed that this would be a classy little thriller so I decided to give it a go. When the opening credits made it look more like any one of a million `straight to video' martial arts films I realised that I had been duped a bit, but decided to give it a go anyway. The plot (written by Griffith himself) is basically the normal one for this type of thing – cop is framed and must fight an army to clear himself and take down the bad guy. It is delivered in quite a good way so it never feels as lame as it is if you actually think about it later. The `twists' are expected – or at least you know there will be twists as there always is in this type of thing.For an action film I must admit that I found the action scenes to be quite workmanlike and even dull at times. It is evident that Griffith had been watching the films coming out of Hong Kong at the time and had wanted to try and emulate some of that. This can be seen in the two handed gun play he does as well as the scenes in the jazz bar (both of which show that he had seen John Woo's Hard Boiled at least). Sadly without the same style he never gets close and most of his fights are good but far from anything impressive or spectacular. Despite these influences the film still falls into the old clichés, so we have a few scenes of T&A (both actually quite nice – Lewis is better looking that she appears and Cruzat only input is to wear very small underwear and walk across a room - yummy!)Griffith actually struggles to carry the film and I didn't feel that he had the screen presence he needed to do it. At the start of the film I didn't think he had the looks of a leading man and looked more like a support bad guy – nothing in the film changed this view, although he did do quite well with some of the more `emotional scenes'. Happily the support cast is full of familiar faces, although why they all signed up for this is beyond me! The famous support is split into two camps – those that make the film better and those who seem to be slumming it. James Earl Jones and Burt Young are definitely among the `slummers' and seem confused as to how they signed up for this. In the other camp Henriksen raises every scene and is better than his stereotypical role should have been, while Todd (Candyman) is lively and enjoyable. Charlotte Lewis used to be in Grange Hill as a youth but her English accent doesn't get in the way – and the T&A clause in her contract shows her to have grown up nicely! Sadly she has little to do but be naked or be saved by McCain!Overall this is not an awful film but it is a very ordinary one. If you have a choice between a blockbuster and this then I'd be tempted to pass on this but, out of a like for like choice this is actually pretty much par for the course. Not great in any sense of the word but just about has enough going for it to justify watching it if there's nothing else on TV.