Frank Gannon, a veteran cop, is being hunted by his fellow police officers after they learned he has betrayed the brotherhood and exposed to the feds wide scale corruption of the LAPD. He has one day left to prove his case and survive.
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direct action is the best Dolph lundgren vehicle since hidden agenda, and although it isn't as good or smart as that movie, direct action delivers just pure fighting and gun battles that lets Dolph do what Dolph does best, kicks ass, there is some kind of plot about police corruption but i wont go into it, but as an action film this delivers the goods, sure it isn't a masterpiece and the low budget shows at times, the amount of quality action on show here, more than makes up for it. all in all a solid Dolph lundgren movie that delivers what wev'e all come to expect from the action star and he does disappoint here
Dolph Lungren plays an honest cop who is going to testify about police corruption on the force. First, he has to drive around a rookie woman police officer. Will they spend the rest of the day running from the corrupt cops wanting him dead? Of course, they will. Will they get into a lot of gun fights where everybody shoot at everybody else? Of course they will. Does this make for a pretty clichéd but pretty entertaining movie? You bet it does. I have definitely seen much worse films than this one. Sure it is predictable (is it a coincidence that one of the dirty cops looks like Al Pacino in Serpico) but it is fun to watch. You are not going to watch Oscar winning stuff, but it is worth your time to rent this movie out.
Dolph Ludgren is Frank Gannon, a cop who was in the D.A.U (Direct Action Unit) a special unit of elite cops focusing on gang violence, drugs, and prostitution. Billie Ross (Polly Shannon) is a female detective trainee who Gannon is assigned to show the ropes to. Other cops are after him after he goes to the feds and rolls over on his fellow boys in blue. One of my friends in the UK sent this to me saying that he liked it and he think I would too. Plus he knows I like seeing movies before they're released in the states. What I saw was a fairly standard cop action drama flick. But a better than average as far as Dolph Lungren is concerned. Not a surprise that it went straight to video in the least, as it adds nothing new to the genre at all and the whole film is strictly routine.My Grade: C-
Given that I had read several positive reviews on this movie and that it comes from the hands of Sidney J Furie, a veteran for over 40 years responsible for 1960's spy thrillers like The Ipcress File and The Naked Runner and has also delivered some very slick direct to video action movies such as Top Of The World, The Rage and Hollow Point as well as the largely underrated 1991 theatrical release The Taking Of Beverly Hills. Furthermore, he also did Detention with Dolph Lundgren which was by no means great but I enjoyed it a lot more than many others did. Given that the general opinion of this was "a step up from Detention", I couldn't wait. Well, having seen the finished product it doesn't really surprise me it's been shelved for so long. It isn't bad, but it could be so much better.None of this can be blamed on Lundgren or any of the cast really for that matter, as much of them deliver acceptable to good performances. Lundgren especially deserves credit as he is in excellent shape and does very well in the action scenes. The film has a good sense of pacing, never letting up enough for the action to stop and plot itself is fine for the type of movie.What really lets this down is the very poor production values - it looks extremely cheap. No better than a Roger Corman produced Bloodfist film for example. Automatic weapons are fired at cars in the line of fire and they don't receive one bullet hole and no glass breaks. We just get a couple of very simple CGI sparks. This happens way too often, and becomes very hard to ignore. There is also some incredibly bad editing. Weather will change from clear Sunny skies to rain and back in seconds. And there's no interesting locations. All you'll get is residential areas and some abandoned factories. The budget of apparently 5-8 million certainly hasn't been well spent. Of course none of this really makes the movie any less watchable, but it's all those little touches that make a movie all that more enjoyable to watch.Overall, this is a decent, entertaining action picture with all the visual flair of a TV drama but it's worth a watch once and for Dolph Lundgren fans it will be a must. I would probably have enjoyed it more with lower expectations, but the overall low quality of the movie is something I just couldn't ignore. Sorry.
