Audience Member
This is an exceptionally bad movie. Zero redeeming qualities. Uniformly bad acting. Wooden direction. Madsen reveals himself as the stilted actor he is and has always been. Hopper did it for the money. So did Durning. They didn't care -- at all.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Some of the hammiest acting and worst fight choreographing available on DVD. Pay close attention to the opening scene and the cop who gets shot next to his squad car...no one even aims at him and yet he is hit by a bullet and dies next to his door! This is a disaster of a movie but it was such a disaster that it was actually enjoyable.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I can be quite thankful that a movie this incomprehensible has probably made much less money than it took to make it. I've seen a fair share of bad movies in my life. There's no telling how much it took to make this movie, but like any other movie (be it good or bad) it's no easy task. Having been on movie sets as an extra, I know full well how much work goes into filmmaking.
Everything boils down not to the quantity of work but the quality. I know that's a subtle quote from Gandhi. Whether L. A. P. D.: To Protect and to Serve had any effort put behind it is beyond me. The only thing I can say is that not only is this movie super abysmal from start to finish, but it's remarkably dumb.
The plot revolves around a risk-taking rookie policeman, Officer Steele who joined the L. A. P. D. to follow in his father's footsteps. His dad is retired from the department and runs a convenience store in downtown L. A. While with the force, Steele and his partner Wade get entangled with corruption within the L. A. P. D. As Steele gets caught up in the entanglement, his personal reputation gets ruined and his dad tries to be his voice of reason.
The plot is a very cluttered, cliched, poorly written, and poorly executed mess. One of the examples starts within the first couple of minutes. The movie opens with an action scene where two heavily armored criminals rob a store and spray the lots with gunfire. This scene bears an uncanny resemblance to the famous shootout that happened in North Hollywood in how it's executed in this movie. I was fourteen when I first saw this movie and even then I could notice its similarity. The way this scene is executed and shot is a snapshot of what the viewer(s) are in for. I will elaborate more on this later.
The next scene is where Capt. Ellsworth gives Steele a shout out for his reckless behavior and taking action without waiting for S. W. A. T. to arrive. Then the plot skips to Steele and his co-workers going to a party at officer Marley's house where drugs and prostitution take place. The next event randomly skips to another robbery that was never hinted at nor does it have any connection with anything that happened.
This brings up problem number one: the editing. As I said, the plot is cluttered and cliched. The action scenes are not only poorly choreographed, but they feel like they were taken from every 90s cop buddy action film and recycled. None of them amount to anything in the plot and are so poorly written one would think that the script was written by someone's 12 year old who spends all of his time watching Hollywood action movies and soft-core porno films.
One could almost consider this the Battlefield Earth of crime dramas. Unlike Battlefield Earth, all of the images are comprehensible, but this movie's camerawork is still on that level of bad not on shooting scenes, but editing them. One will easily notice errors in continuity and choreography. Two examples are when Mr. Steele's store gets robbed the man holding him at gunpoint butts him in the face with his shotgun. We see in the next scene that his nose isn't bleeding and blood is instead coming from the left corner of his mouth. Meanwhile during this same scene, we see the accomplice hit a female customer and it's obvious that the hand didn't make any contact nor give any convincing injuries. And no I'm not for violence against women.
Another example is when Officer Payne shoots his fleeing accomplice once but the next scene shows he was shot twice. What Battlefield Earth lacked in the badness of editing, this movie makes up for. I don't know if this movie was screened for critics, but if it were there would be no doubt that it would share the recognition as one of the worst movies ever made.
As I hinted at earlier, there is a lot of violence and sex in this movie. Most involves prostitution and a brief scene of masochism. This is one of those police "dramas'' that uses such material to try to explore the sin and vice of L. A. Every dynamic this movie uses in this realm falls flat. Due to lame dialogue and wooden acting, the story isn't dramatic. Everything is badly interwoven, appears at random, amounts to nothing in the story, and feels needless on this movie's part. Every attempt this movie tries at being dramatic comes off as very laughable and the characters are total buffoons. Every actor gives a bland performance and the picture quality feels like a recycled TV sitcom.
In short, nothing in this movie is engaging or fun to watch. The action scenes feel recycled, the editing is a joke, the dialogue is dumb, the drama is laughable, and the plot is downright stupid. It's a shame that actors Michael Madsen and Dennis Hopper had to be in this. If one likes laughably bad films, this may be up his/her alley, but the better film to recommend in that genre would be The Room. The only good thing I can say is that I got to watch this on YouTube for free and not waste $2.00+shipping for this garbage on Amazon. That very fact says a lot about spending in today's economy. If one takes nothing from this review, take this: spend your money on something you know is good. Otherwise, conserve it.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/20/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This is definately the worst movie i have ever seen! However, this film is one of the movies that are so bad that they're actually fun to watch. And this is the MUST SEE movie of all bad movies! Make sure you watch it with a friend :)
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This movie was SO bad-I couldnt even stand to watch it all the way through.Im so happy I got to watch it for free & didnt have to pay for this garbage
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Extremely piss poor. Absolutely bad. A total mess. A waste of time.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
Full Review
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