When I heard a straight-to-video sequel to the 2003 actioner S.W.A.T. was right around the corner, the special weapons and tactics unit in my pants became visibly mobilized. That being said, S.W.A.T.: Firefight has absolutely nothing to do with the first one. Sure, there is a S.W.A.T. team present, but it’s a whole new cast, led by Gabriel Macht (The Spirit) as Cutler, a by-the-book S.W.A.T. superstar in L.A. who, through a student-exchange program sponsored by Homeland Security, is sent to Detroit to train a ragtag group of misfits to adapt to the fast paced-world of post-9/11 S.W.A.T. procedures and practices. (Personally, I would’ve just built a RoboCop. But I think outside the box.)

The first hour and 10 minutes is the best damn training video you’ve ever seen, something you’d watch on your first day on the force. It’d be called So You Think You Got What It Takes to Be in S.W.A.T.? From hand-to-hand combat to target practice, it’s all here and occasionally filmed first-person video-game shooter-style, which is fun for us, but might cause impressionable youths to shoot their classmates.

While all this is going on, Robert Patrick minimally toys with the crew, in a bid for poorly plotted revenge: He’s an ex-CIA spook who is pissed they kinda-sorta-but-not-really killed the woman (Kristanna Loken, for about one minute) he’s been stalking. We’ve all been there, right?

Next Day Air director Benny Boom does a good job here, especially with the material he’s given. If anything, Firefight feels like an above-average TV pilot for a new S.W.A.T. television incarnation, which I’m sure would air on CBS after JAG: The Next Generation and NCIS: Surf Patrol ’11. Oh, and that iconic Barry De Vorzon theme? A few bars of it show up dutifully over the opening credits, and proceed to disappear, never to be heard again. However, they had plenty of room for rapper Tony Yayo’s “S.W.A.T. 2,” which manages to prove everything un-hip white people have said about hip-hop absolutely true in only three minutes. —Louis Fowler

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