Truly Dreadful Film

Just perfect...

Good concept, poorly executed.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Terry McCain (Griffith) is a Chicago cop who is pretty much on the edge. A member of the Tactical Narcotics Unit, he's obsessed with taking down the slick mobster drug dealer Sal DiMarco, who, like John Gotti, seems to be made of "Teflon" and always manages to avoid jail time. During a shootout with the DiMarco mob, three million dollars in a suitcase goes missing. Naturally, DiMarco wants it back, and he assumes McCain and his team are behind the missing loot. So now the mobsters are after the cops, and McCain and his girlfriend (Lewis) must go on the run. Luckily Police Chief Devlin (Henriksen) has given McCain a wide berth to go off on his own (not necessarily "rogue") and catch/punch/kick/kill the baddies. After some mild twists and turns in the plot, we see who is the true dispenser of EXCESSIVE FORCE.The good news is, this is a movie that lives up to its title. There's some hilariously, unnecessarily brutal violence, as if the writer (T.I.G. himself, interestingly enough) felt he HAD to live up to the title. Like he thought, "well, I already spent all day coming up with this title, better make sure the movie has an excessive amount of force". Well played, Mr. Ian Griffith. Well played.The real reason to watch this movie isn't Thomas Ian Griffith's constant roundhouse and jump kicks, but the killer cast! For starters, what is James Earl Jones doing here? This might make an action movie first: a Shakespearean actor on hand to play Jazz with Thomas Ian Griffith! Terry McCain is a pretty in-the-pocket Jazz pianist, just so you know. (McCain also has an earring, so you know he's cool, long, greasy hair , resembles Christian TV evangelist Joel Osteen and might be a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia. Research is still being done).Then we have Lance Henriksen, doing his best as Devlin, Tony Todd as Frankie, again, struggling against some potential mediocrity and coming out quite well, the awesome Burt Young doing what he does best - being Burt Young. The movie could have used more Burt. The presence of Charlotte Lewis as the model Anna Gilmour was appreciated. And of course all the lesser-known names in the cast performed admirably as well. Additionally, the Martial Arts Technical Adviser on the film was Benny "The Jet" Urquidez. Sadly he doesn't appear on screen. So you have a much better than average cast for this sort of thing, which is nice, and they help to sell the more inane aspects of the plot without you even realizing it, because that's what good actors do. And, yes, this movie is riddled with clichés, but for the most part they are the FUN clichés you want (You mean Terry McCain's use of excessive force is always getting him in trouble? No way!). Amazingly enough, this movie went to the theater! It never would today. Maybe the cast is part of the reason why.But the movie is enjoyable, if not groundbreaking, and, yes, much of the brutality is fairly unwarranted, but this is EXCESSIVE FORCE people! While not nearly as violent as, say, Wardogs (1986), perhaps Griffith felt he went too far and didn't want to be pigeonholed, so the follow-up, Ulterior Motives (1993), is less impactful. 'Motives does not consistently and strongly follow up Excessive Force properly and a lot of steam was taken out of the T.I.G. train. That might explain why he isn't really a household name, even among action movie fans.For a fun beat/shoot 'em up, try Excessive Force.for more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

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.

Thomas Ian Griffith stars as Terry McCain a loose cannon cop who declares war on a mobster (Burt Young) when that mobster kills McCain's friends, however when McCain spares the mobster and finds him dead when he comes back to arrest him, McCain finds a corruption in this bland, predictable and downright awful movie. Excessive Force is a movie so generic that everything is spelled out before the opening scenes, a truly terrible movie which even wastes James Earl Jones.

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.