Thanks for the memories!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The acting in this movie is really good.

With the success of Steven Seagal in the late 1980s. Thomas Ian Griffith was touted as the next action star. He had been in Karate Kid 3, knew his martial arts and had fair amount of acting experience.To stroke his ego, Excessive Force was written by him as well. He plays McCain a maverick Chicago cop obsessed with taking down mobster Sal DiMarco (Burt Young) but he always outwits the cops with smart lawyers and the police using excessive force when taking him down.However DiMarco's guys lose a case with three million dollars in an incident with the police and DiMarco thinks McCain and his team stole it and he sends his goons.McCain and his girlfriend go on the run as bodies start to pile up including his partner and best friend. Police Chief Devlin (Lance Henriksen) never happy with McCain's methods has given him the wink to go after the baddies. However when DiMarco ends up dead he becomes the prime suspect and finds out a more complex web of police corruption.The plus side is Griffith is a decent enough actor. Not only is his character a hot headed cop with martial arts skills, he can also play jazz piano. The film also has some good support actors with James Earl Jones, Young and Henriksen.There is also some intense violent scenes at the beginning of the film and at least a little bit of plotting even if it is rather clichéd. I just thought it lacked something special and one of which was some good, exciting martial arts action. I thought the fight choreography was weak and it seems Griffith lacked a unique selling point in what was already a crowded martial arts action market.

For the most part, "Excessive Force" isn't anything that you've seen before. Oh, I'll admit it has an interesting supporting cast (Jones, Hendriksen, and Young), and despite a $3 million budget the movie looks slick and very expensive, with some very good night photography. But the rest of the movie just doesn't stand out from others on the video store shelf. Griffith just isn't believable as a cop who happens to play in a jazz band on the side. And he isn't very likable, coming across as a kind of a p*ick. People will probably be more interested in his action skills, however, and they should be warned that the action in the movie is a disappointment. The martial art sequences are very badly directed, and their choreography looks like beginner level stuff. Where the movie really suffers is with Griffith's script. The whole thing about corrupt cops and mobsters is very familiar, and some plot details are either vague or totally missing. It doesn't help that the whole story unfolds at a very slow pace, with ample padding to boot. It will take a lot of excessive force for viewers to sit all the way through it.

Thomas Ian Griffith seems to be a better actor then screenplay writer, because the story is somewhat forgetful, the story centers around Terry McCain, A tough Dirty Harry like cop. who beats a confession out of witness in order to put a mob boss(Burt Young) away for life. But the mob boss, gets off due to Terry's excessive antics on a witness. But the heat really gets turned up on Terry, when the mob boss turns up dead, and Terry becomes the main suspect. Thomas Ian Griffith may seem like another Steven Seagal, but unlike Steven Seagal, Thomas Ian Griffith is an action hero who can act, and unlike Steven Seagal's characters, Thomas Ian Griffith made the character of Terry McCain, more human then one dymentional. Despite good acting by Thomas Ian Griffith,and good martial arts scenes. The story is very forgetful.

When I rented this film, I had to keep on looking at the box just to remind myself of the title. Fittingly, the generic title makes sense for this completely unoriginal film. For what it is, the action isn't bad, and there are a surprisingly high number of familiar faces, but the plot is as standard as it gets. Anyone even remotely familiar with this genre should be able to recognize how typical this movie is, and they should be able to spot most of the plot twists a mile away. Much like I had expected, this film is watchable enough, but it wasn't particularly entertaining, and it is entirely forgettable.