| 80 |
Film Threat
Kevin Carr
One of those guilty pleasures of the summer. It’s also one of those action movies that could have been ruined if Jerry Bruckheimer had taken charge of it.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
As the team leader, Jackson finds exactly the right tone for the role: a sort of playful cockiness that comes from knowing just how good he is. He's clearly having fun, but he never winks at the audience too much or allows his performance to devolve into camp.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
One of the best cop thrillers since "Training Day."
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Aware of its own cuteness because the dialogue plays by the rules of meta-entertainment.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Directed by Clark Johnson in an efficient and occasionally exhilarating style that points to the Emmy-winner's TV cop-show pedigree ("Homicide," "The Wire," "NYPD Blue").
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
While the movie is stupid, it is -- hooray, and let's put this in all the national ads! -- not appallingly stupid.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
Offers up the kind of pleasures that only a summer movie can...The cast is good-looking, the soundtrack is loud, the plot is stupid.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
The standout in the cast is James Todd Smith, whose acting talent may soon persuade him to shed his adolescent stage name of LL Cool J and concentrate on mainstream film roles.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
The strongest parts of the film aren't these money shots, but the buildup to the gunplay.
|
| 60 |
Dallas Observer
A thoroughly unremarkable police action movie starring the magnetic Samuel L. Jackson.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
As summer shoot-'em-ups go, this is pretty well executed, with plenty of macho posing and gunfire.
|
| 60 |
Empire
Formula is now the name of the game, although a steady diet of stunts and shootouts ensures that the audience is never bored.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
S.W.A.T. boasts the kernel of a good idea - but it gets buried in the chaff of half-baked plot threads, partly realized characters and unstructured pandemonium.
|
| 50 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Noisy, standard-issue cop actioner.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
By the time you've given up guessing whether S.W.A.T. wants to be a half-serious action pic or just affably jokey, its storytelling has turned so ludicrously melodramatic that it doesn't matter.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Though the film's second half has some good action moments, it never fulfills the promise of its earliest scenes.
|
| 50 |
ReelViews
Likely won't please fans of the original TV series, but the movie hasn't been made for them.
|
| 50 |
Rolling Stone
What we have here is a model for the paint-by-numbers, perfectly generic, proudly soulless summer action flick. An original idea would die for lack of oxygen in S.W.A.T.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Coming in the wake of the physically astonishing "Bad Boys 2," S.W.A.T. seems square.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Actor-turned-director Clark Johnson uses the flashy, up-to-the-minute editing and camera stunts action fans expect, but keeps the mayhem on a recognizably human scale — it's big, but not insanely overblown.
|
| 50 |
New York Magazine
There is something sneakily gratifying about all this: Not since the days of "Earthquake" have Hollywood producers so indulged their fantasies of trashing the town.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
Those who love police overkill, guns, jingoistic race-baiting, guns, macho smugness, and guns will be well served.
|
| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's just one more competent but routine, midlevel ($70 million) late-summer action movie filled with the usual explosions, shootouts and male bonding.
|
| 50 |
Slate
I was all revved up to have a whale of a fascist good time, and S.W.A.T. left me let down and pissed-off.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
Serviceable, wholly uninspired.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
Mostly standard-issue muddle.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
Technically clever but emotionally bankrupt...it's an almost laughably opportunistic movie.
|
| 38 |
Miami Herald
A compendium of missed opportunities, uninspired action and clichés so tired, you wish the screenwriters had called 911, too.
|
| 38 |
Baltimore Sun
S.W.A.T. may be an acronym for Special Weapons and Tactics, but by the end of this routine melodrama, it might as well stand for Standard Whacking and Trashing.
|
| 38 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Stephen Cole
Lots of buildings and cars explode, but there isn't a spark between any of the characters.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
Surely something more original than this could have been mined from the history of North America’s largest and most professional police force. As it is, though, Johnson’s film is just firing blanks.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
SWAT is better than "Gigli," but so is most outpatient surgery.
|
| 20 |
Salon.com
Seems best suited to all the couch-potato swinging dicks who get off watching the police on "Cops" keep the public safe from people in possession of marijuana.
|
| 10 |
Wall Street Journal
Looks like the deformed spawn of a development process gone awry.
|
| 10 |
Village Voice
A prototypical new-millennium summer movie, S.W.A.T. is no more than an extended trailer for itself.
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