I wanted to but couldn't!

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

A Masterpiece!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

LA SWAT's finest leader named Cutler is tasked with training Detroit SWAT. He isn't crazy about the idea but goes anyway. He finds a team that's a bit disorganized and unfocused. He's supposed to get them ready to pass some FBI certification. Right in the middle of the first training session, they get a call of a hostage situation. Cutler decides to change roles and sends another guy as the sniper instead of the sniper expert. When he and the sniper expert arrive, they find Walter, played by Patrick, holding a gun to a girl. Cutler orders the shot but his sniper misses so they have to shoot the bad guy--non-lethally. Cutler orders the expert sniper to contain the hostage, he fails to do so, the girl grabs a gun and shoots herself.Despite the disaster of an operation, Cutler is still allowed to be in charge. He fires the guy who failed to contain the witness after a battle of wits. As his replacement he brings in some skinny girl whom he knows from their days in Iraq. She of course if superior to all the other guys. Training continues. But Walter has been freed and we learn that he's tracking the SWAT guys. He gets one of their training books, starts harassing Cutler with phone calls, leaves a flower arrangement at his house, plants a bomb under his car. One day he shows up at the police station. But he's followed by agents from the State Department, who tell police that he's a valuable guy and that they can't touch him.Walter continues to plan revenge. We learn that during the hostage situation, it was the girl, Walter's girlfriend, who posed the risk and he was trying to resolve the situation. When finally the Detroit top cop tells Cutler to get lost, the team resigns in protest, so he has to revert his decision and let Cutler go after Walter, which is of course just what Walter wants. There's a final confrontation in an abandoned training facility when Walter takes Cutler's girl, the department's shrink, hostage.SWAT Firefight is a good low-budget action thriller. The action is well-filmed and you do end up caring about the characters. I enjoyed the tone of this movie. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's not goofy either. It doesn't make Detroit looks as bad as Hollywood usually likes to do. The Cutler character is also interesting because he's not the super-cop who comes to rescue the incompetent Detroit cops. He's no authoritarian but handles things with humor and wit. Some of the Detroit cops actually look like they could be cops. Just Cutler is rather skinny for the part. But Macht makes up for it with charisma. Relationships are also handled well, especially between Cutler and his new girl. They don't end up in bed immediately after meeting each other, and they aren't obnoxious or abusive to each other either. I wish there had been more focus on the training of the team, that was the original purpose of the movie, but that's completely set aside for the hunt for Walter. Also a shame that Kristanna Loken doesn't get more screen time. Overall an entertaining movie.

Okay, I think I summed up the movie relatively well in the title line. There were some good action scenes and for a B-list ensemble, the acting wasn't horrible. There was also an attempt to have the story drive the movie, rather than have it be a vehicle for off the wall, Michael Bay-esque explosions and groan inducing, Steven Seagal type fire and fistfights.Now the negative. Basically, this movie is another one of those "unconventional teacher takes a job at an inner city school and uses tough love and creative methods to teach all the rough, gangster wannabe kids that they DO have a future and can make something of themselves," type of movies...only it's with a SWAT Team.Okay, so not the worst story in the world. Overused, obviously, but not the worst. The things that got me were the unanswered questions and glaring factual errors. I've already added a few in the goofs section, but here are a bunch of things that made me not like the movie:-Detroit PD's SRT (not SWAT, as they are in the movie) is a VERY top notch unit, equal to LAPD SWAT in terms of quality officers, training, and equipment. That they needed to learn from the "more" elite LAPD unit is silly and a bit insulting. It also seems unlikely that Detroit wouldn't be on the FBI's short list for HRT certification alongside LA rather than after.-They really didn't seem to learn anything special in the training course that a CIVILIAN couldn't learn at a shooting class. (see: Frontsight, Gunsite, etc). FBI HRT is a top tier, counterterrorist unit that trains alongside Delta Force and DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six) for a LONG list of missions. That they shoot on the move rather than standing still is NOT what sets them apart from police SWAT teams.-The fact that they called it "Detroit SWAT" rather than "SRT" shows a lack of attention to detail, IMO. A little thing, but it annoyed me. "But not everyone knows what SRT is," yeah, they wear tactical armor and carry M4 rifles and take down hostage takers, we would have figured it out.-I didn't understand why they had an LAPD officer training DPD officers in supposed HRT tactics. If DPD's team wanted to be HRT certified, why didn't the FBI send HRT operators to certify them? -Why was Cutler armed with that stupid Bushmaster ACR the whole time? Yeah, it looks cool, but it's all bark and no bite. Obviously, they were trying to attract the Modern Warfare crowd with that.-Cutler picks an old army buddy to be his assistant, even though she (Cutler's friend) doesn't have any law enforcement experience. Being a SWAT officer is very different than being a solider. Sure, they have some of the same tactics in terms of shooting and room clearing, but there's also different rules of engagement, and SWAT officers are still police officers, not soldiers. Doesn't matter if you were a Navy SEAL or you worked at McDonald's before you became a cop, you still go through the same academy and you still work patrol for a few years before you can even apply to your department's tactical unit. That somebody, just because they were in the army, would immediately be assigned to a SWAT team without having even attended a police academy, is just stupid. I know it's a movie, but it's stupid. Cutler hand picks a buddy to help in the certification process and he doesn't even pick a fellow cop? C'mon man!-And of course, my favorite thing (and they do this even in the good cop movies) the fact that police officers gun down the bad guys, and that's that. Clean your gun, get some chow, and get ready for the next call out. No administrative leave, no mountain of OIS (officer involved shooting) paperwork, no media asking "why didn't they just shoot him in the leg? Did they say 'please' when they asked him to drop the gun?" I could go on for hours, but overall, the movie was dumb, and I'll leave it at that.

OK, let me first say that this is my first ever review - I was compelled to write one based on simply how BAD this movie is. The only reason I didn't give it a 1 is because I have seen worse. Another reason I felt angry enough to write a review is because I normally like these kind of movies. Normally all you have to do is include something like SWAT, SAS or Marines in the description of the movie and point me towards it and I will lap it up. Unfortunately however, SWAT: Firefight only succeeded for me in one regard - it has SWAT in its title. The story is just weak, really weak. Just when you feel it is about to get going, it literally ends. Its cliché to an extreme and about as predictable a movie I have ever seen. I wont go on but to summarize, this is just a bad movie. If you want some decent SWAT like viewing entertainment, I recommend Flashpoint (Canadian TV Series) or possibly watching paint dry could also be considered a viable alternative.

This movie was available ON DEMAND, so I thought I'd give it a chance, mostly because it starred Gabriel Macht, an actor I've enjoyed in supporting roles in major films. The movie starts off well: Sgt. Cutler, an LAPD SWAT leader with a military background (Macht) is sent to Detroit to train-up their SWAT team for some special Federal hostage/rescue certification. The film takes the time to develop the team members to some degree and includes the requisite tension between the new officer and the locals that leads to one of the more senior Detroit SWAT members, Kellogg, being "re-assigned," despite the fact that he's by far the team's best sniper. I can't speak to the veracity of any of the training techniques that are presented in the movie as being updated, post-Iraq and Afganistan procedures, but it made sense to this lay person and was interesting to watch.When Cutler brings in a female, former soldier sight unseen (no police training or certifications; no knowledge of Detroit and Michigan state law), it's not very plausible, but it was easy to overlook since it was fun to watch the team interact. The movie falls apart when, instead of being a movie about a SWAT leader and his team going up against the bad guy, it becomes a one man against the bad guy movie with the team fading into the background. Why take the time to build chemistry between and among the team leader and his squad only to have them relegated to the background? I would have bet the mortgage that Kellogg, the best shot in the Department, would show up to help Sgt. Cutler take down the bad guy. He shows up, but only to be told to stay behind (which he does!).But the worst part is the dismal ending. The Detroit police chief in charge of the SWAT teams asks Sgt. Cutler to stay on after the team's been decimated. But Cutler says he wants to go home. End of movie. Someone forgot to tell the screenwriter that the hero's supposed to have finally found his home and wouldn't dream of leaving his new buddies. Overall, not totally bad, but nearly so.