Excessive Force
Excessive Force
R | 14 May 1993 (USA)
Excessive Force Trailers

Chicago policeman Terry McCain is determined to put away mobster Sal DiMarco, who always gets acquitted on technicalities. While monitoring a drug sale, a shootout ensues, and one of Terry's fellow officers gets away with $3 million of Sal's money. Suspecting Terry took the cash, the mobster sends his men to kill Terry's brother, Dylan, and partner, Frankie Hawkins. Furious, Terry sets out to take his revenge by any means necessary.

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Reviews
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.

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andertonian

Written by Thomas Ian Griffith. Doesn't that just say it all? Thomas Ian Griffith plays Terry McCain, a cop out to bring the local mob, run by Sal DiMarco (Burt Young), to it's knees! But Terry McCain uses EXCESSIVE FORCE to meet his needs, and in the beginning of the movie, we hear Terry lambasted for his use of EXCESSIVE FORCE. The chief of police, Devlin (the always-brilliant-in-not-so-brilliant-movies Lance Henriksen), tells McCain that he's out of line! He's a loose cannon! When the mob kills McCain's partner, he's out for JUSTICE! And he'll use EXCESSIVE FORCE! And KARATE KICKS! I laughed pretty hard at a lot of the lines and scenarios. We learn early on that not only is McCain an ass-kicking martial arts master, but a jazz aficionado and an expert piano player! He's also good buddies with Jake (James Earl Jones), a jazz bar owner. Jake and McCain bring the voodoo! That's character development only the great Thomas Ian Griffith could come up with! Griffith plays McCain like you'd expect, with less acting and more stuntwork. Tony Todd is charismatic as Griffith's buddy Frankie, but his screen time is pretty limited. Both Burt Young and James Earl Jones look embarrassed, and the former phoning in his performance to the least of his ability. This leaves Henriksen, whose every line as the crooked police chief was taken out of the book of lines for the crooked police chief, but he delivers them in a completely untypical way. His first appearance is when he informs Griffith that he's a loose cannon, but he does it with such class you'll almost forget you're watching a movie called "Excessive Force". Then the camera pans over to Thomas Ian Griffith. Henriksen goes the extra mile in his performance by making Devlin truly an unlikeable bad guy in a movie with really lame good guys. If good acting in a bad movie is not enough for you, there's a point when he casually remarks, "Well boys, looks like we're going to have to kick some ass." That this line was written is bad, but the way Lance breezes through it, without a smirk or hint of embarrassment? Alone, it's worth your money. Give this man an honorary Oscar, already.It shouldn't be any surprise that Henriksen carries a bad movie, and this is a bad movie, no doubt about it. Every line, plot twist, and character is taken right out of the book of Seagal. So is it entertaining? Of course it is! Henriksen gets a lot of screen time, the action sequences are in abundance, and the writing is terrible. It's not quite the unexpected masterpiece of Hard Target, but if you watched Hard to Kill and giggled like a school girl at the line "I'll take you to the bank... the blood bank", then this movie's worth your 90 minutes.

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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.

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Tito-8

When I rented this film, I had to keep on looking at the box just to remind myself of the title. Fittingly, the generic title makes sense for this completely unoriginal film. For what it is, the action isn't bad, and there are a surprisingly high number of familiar faces, but the plot is as standard as it gets. Anyone even remotely familiar with this genre should be able to recognize how typical this movie is, and they should be able to spot most of the plot twists a mile away. Much like I had expected, this film is watchable enough, but it wasn't particularly entertaining, and it is entirely forgettable.

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