TACTICAL FORCE is another vehicle for bald, hulking, ex-wrestler turned actor Steve Austin, who seems to have become the new Seagal ever since he starred as a villain in Stallone's THE EXPENDABLES. So far, I've seen Austin in a passable variant of Van Damme's A.W.O.L. (called DAMAGE),but this is a straightforward shoot-em-up. It's as much fun as DAMAGE, proving that Austin is an adequate star for fans of light action.

The premise and setting for this movie couldn't have been much cheaper: a small SWAT team are on a training exercise in an abandoned warehouse, but they soon find themselves assailed by various gangster types. Cue lots of drawn-out fight scenes and sequences of characters firing heavy weaponry at each other. It's a workable premise - Tarantino revealed the brilliance of utilising such a setting and a small cast twenty years ago in RESERVOIR DOGS - and the decent pacing makes it a painless viewing experience.

The production values are a little weak if you look at them too closely, and it's fair to say that the cast are well-suited to B-movies; Austin is on particularly dodgy ground here, and would do better to just keep his mouth shut and hit people as that's what he does best. There are some heavyweights (physically rather than acting) in support, like Michael Jai White (just in case you wondered what happened to him after UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN) and the arresting Darren Shahlavi and Keith Jardine, but this looks and feels like a B-movie through and through.

The action isn't bad, but I would have liked a little more of it. The requisite shoot-outs and fist-fights are fun, although the van chase is ridiculously stupid and some of the explosions are a little on the fake side. The ending is also a tad disappointing, getting too mixed up between the bad-bad characters and the good-bad characters. But I went into TACTICAL FORCE expecting nothing, and I got a mildly entertaining movie instead, so I can't complain too much.

In the battle of Austin and Seagal I have come to believe Austin is the better actor. The movie starts out improbable as a gang of men in masks, rob a grocery store, take hostages and issue demands. A grocery store? Now I know they get robbed, but by a gang who has to share the loot? SWAT team leader Austin ignores proper police protocol and raids the place, killing the thieves, injuring the hostages, and doing huge amounts of property damage. To their surprise they are not rewarded, but are forced to take SWAT team training again. Michael Jai White, a young Carl Weathers with a BB gun is part of the team. Lexa Doig is a third member.

The upstairs of an abandoned(?) warehouse is set up with paper "bad guys" for the SWAT team to practice with simulation rounds. As fate would have it, two rival gangs are in the downstairs of the warehouse wanting "a case" which was stolen from them. One of the rival gangs learned to speak with bad Russian accents. I was waiting for one of them to say, "What about moose and squirrel."

The dialouge was mildly humorous at times, a step up from Austin's other movies. The plot left much to be desired. There were no real plot twists except at the very end...and then it didn't make much sense.

If you like Steve Austin movies, I think this was one of his better ones.

F-bomb, no sex. no nudity, no moose or squirrel.

​Directed by Adamo Paulo Culatrano

Starring Steve Austin, Michael Jai White and Lexa Doig

​ Plot Overview: After a hostage situation gone bad, Tate(Steve Austin) and his SWAT team are sent back to do basic training but when they are caught in the middle of a gang war and with no live ammo, things go bad real fast.

General:

Overall: I will never rate a movie either a 1 or a 10 just to decrease its rank. I will only rank movies based on what I genuinely think they should be ranked. That being said, this is one of the worst movies I've watched in the past few years. With the bleak exception of a kind of alright premise(which they drop within the first 40 minutes),there is nothing redeeming to this movie. The acting was atrocious, the story was nonexistent and the action was just awful. The tone is all over the place and the dialogue was depressingly bad. I can genuinely not think of one proper strength of this movie. I just can't. Aside from a premise which is dropped, there isn't anything that I can say kept me watching other than the fact that I was interested if it could become any worse. If this is your standard for quality entertainment and you hold this movie at a rank with 'Die Hard' and 'Judgement Day', then I don't envy you, and I suggest you watch a LOT more movies.

I don't know what type of people will like this other than maybe if you enjoy Steve Austin and if you admire this 'style' of action.

Wouldn't Recommend.

Detailed:

The acting was just all around atrocious. I'm not gonna bother mentioning names *cough* Steve Austin *cough* because I don't deem the majority of them worthy of space in this review. That is how poor they were. To top that off, each and every character was either an archetype or human stereotype, and none of them were even remotely interesting or likable or enjoyable to watch.

There was an idea, buried deep deep down under this trash, that could have made a competent, fun action movie with some quirky characters and cool one liners. This good idea was completely disregarded after maybe 40 minutes and it just becomes a stupid action movie after that. I'm not sure if there was an actual story and that plot overview I wrote above was something I think I made up to flow with the movie because very little time is actually dedicated to it. That would be fine but if there was a semi-competent story, I could have named a strength to the film. The ending was also absolutely absurd. Nothing more needs to be said on the matter. It was awful.

The cinematography can be summed up in THREE words: What. The. Heck. The framing of shots, the editing, the lighting - what were they thinking! I can give credit to Joel Schumacher's dutch angle obsessed 'Batman and Robin' in the cinematography department but even this movie lacks that.

The effects are, to put it in layman's terms, absolutely barbarically god awful. The set design was lazy and generic. The costume design fell into three categories: Cop stereotypes, Russian Stereotypes and Italian stereotypes. That's not a compliment by the way.

The movie's main focus should have been the action. So if little effort went to anything before it, the action should be amazing. Right? Well, logically yes; in reality no. The action was just bad. This movie's exhausted by brain cells and I just don't feel like it deserves anything above Primary school vocabulary.

Another flaw with the film is the tone. Upon hearing the premise of this film, I thought it could be an alright and fun action movie with some witty one liners and clever action. Well I've established the poor action so I'll address the tone. The opening sequence of this film is pretty light hearted and almost fun. Then the movie continues and the tone goes on a roller coaster but, unlike a roller coaster, there's no satisfying climax. The dialogue was terrible. Here's a game: ​Take a shot whenever someone says something racist/sexist/homophobic OR when there is some form of stereotype uses. I guarantee you'll be hospitalised by the half way mark.

1/10

Wouldn't Recommend