Disclaimer: I don’t usually watch cop movies. I find them to be of one extreme or the other. Either the cops are portrayed as noble and by-the-book, even if it means the perpetrators are allowed to go free (which veers so far from reality that you may as well affix the “fantasy” label), or portrayed as so corrupt that the film descends into ridiculousness, like Training Day.

Speaking of Training Day, its screenwriter, David Ayer, is the writer and director of End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) and Michael Peña (30 Minutes or Less) as two uniformed patrolmen in South Central L.A. The movies have several points in common: the street language, sudden eruption of gut-wrenching violence, and the portrayal of the police as modern-day cowboys attempting to tame an ever-increasing lawless territory.

The heart of the film is the bromance between Gyllenhaal and Peña, partners who aggravate and pick on each other like brothers and, of course, love and trust each other unconditionally. Although the movie periodically strays from gritty realism into Hollywood hyperbole, the chemistry between the two leads sparkle. Both actors shine.

Unfortunately, much like Training Day, the movie lost me during its third act, when it trades realism for the needless and implausible plot development of a Mexican drug cartel putting a hit out on our street-cop protagonists. There are some jarring time jumps that may have you wondering if the story is unfolding in a matter of days, weeks or months. And can we retire the handheld camera mode of storytelling?

Some parts come perilously close to being a recruiting film for the police (much like Top Gun drummed up enlistees for the military), but don’t see it for that or the tacked-on violent climax. See it for the Gyllenhaal and Peña, and some scenes that will make you wish they had never stepped foot out of their squad car. —Slade Grayson

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If you see only one David Heavener film in your life … well, it’s clearly one too many. Heavener’s one of those guys who does practically everything in his low-budget action movies; in addition to starring and producing, he provides the witless writing, the lifeless direction and the atrocious music. (It’s a wonder he wasn’t credited with doing his own mullet-sculpting.) Despite all his involvement to the contrary, he can’t be an action hero, because he looks like the guy who last serviced my car.

In Twisted Justice, he plays Tucker, a quirky, renegade Los Angeles cop in the year 2020. How quirky and renegade, you ask? How’s sleeping in the bathtub in dirty longjohns with his jelly-donut-eating hamster for you? Tucker’s on the trail of a serial killer who murders hot, rich women connected to a chemical company.

Or, as his boss (Erik Estrada, TV’s CHiPs) puts it, “We’ve got a turbo-charged fruit loop here.” Congress has outlawed guns, however, so the cops have to make do with stun darts. Good thing our boy Tucker — who drives a beat-up car with the license plate “TUCK U” — still carries his illegal weapon, with bullets hidden inside a donut kept in a box next to his toilet.

Estrada is just one part of an all-star washed-up supporting cast that includes Jim Brown, Karen Black, James Van Patten, Shannon Tweed and a “special appearance by Gerald Milton.” (Wait, who? The executive producer.) It’s with Tweed that Heavener proves his true ineptness as a filmmaker: Who in the fuck casts Tweed and doesn’t write himself a five-minute sex scene with her? Heavener, that’s who. In fact, he doesn’t even have her take off her clothes. That’s just Twisted, dude. Now will you please rotate my tires while you’re at it?

Fun fact: This was the last movie I watched before nervously hopping on a plane for the first time after 9/11, mere weeks. If it had turned out to be the last movie of my life, I would’ve been pissed. —Rod Lott

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Technically, the eight films collected as The Hire are BMW commercials, but really, they’re rather exemplary models of short-form filmmaking. For the project, David Fincher and BMW rounded up A-list directors, with each assigned to bring their vision of The Driver (Clive Owen, Children of Men), a suave BMW wheelman-for-hire, to cinematic life. It’s like the Jason Statham franchise The Transporter reconfigured into an unofficial anthology film.

Unsurprisingly, the Asians fare very well, with John Woo’s “Hostage” being among the best of the lot. It has more thrills and twists in its 10 minutes than most feature-length action films (his especially). On the opposite end of the pulse meter — but every bit its equal in quality — is “The Follow,” from Chungking Express director Wong Kar Wai, about The Driver being hired to follow a wife suspected of infidelity. Ang Lee contributes a chase-as-operatic-ballet in “Chosen,” and manages to reference his much-hated Hulk in a clever ending.

Smokin’ Aces‘ Joe Carnahan delivers “Ticker,” a gritty tale with The Driver transporting Don Cheadle and his mysterious briefcase while they’re tailed by helicopters and machine-gun fire. “Ambush” was helmed by the late John Frankenheimer, who clearly knew a thing or two about car chases. The story from Amores Perros helmer Alejandro González Iñárritu — about getting a wounded combat photographer out of Central America — is a bit of a downer, but true to the filmmaker’s style.

Guy Ritchie’s “Star” lets then-wife Madonna poke fun at her image as a bitchy singer who gets roughed up by The Driver’s insane street driving. It attempts comedy with success, which cannot be said about Tony Scott’s entry, so embarrassingly over-the-top in its own pretentiousness that you can understand why critics hounded him his entire career. But one stinker out of eight cannot spoil the overall package. Even with so many unique touches at work, The Hire works as an overall whole, thanks to Owen’s cucumber-cool persona and pinwheel-precision skills behind the wheel. —Rod Lott

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One of many jungle bungles shot in the Philippines, Savage Sisters is a women-in-prison picture with a difference. And that difference is a pinch of Ginger: the star of the sleazy Ginger saga, Cheri Caffaro.

Sorry to disappoint potential viewers, but the Savage Sisters? Not real sisters. (Insert snare drum riff here.) They are subversive liberator and Navy daughter Jo Turner (Caffaro), political fanatic and commando Mei Ling (Filipino starlet Rosanna Ortiz), and their initial enemy, testicle-torture expert Col. Lynn Jackson (Gloria Hendry, Live and Let Die).

Believe it or not, but the story is too political for an AIP exploitation film. It has something to do with a hustler trying to smuggle a million bucks out of a banana republic — the country, not the clothing store — and naturally, everyone wants their hands on it. Everyone also wants their hands on these lithesome ladies, but that’s beside the point.

Jackson is assigned to find the two “hardcore insurrectionists” — revolutionaries Turner and Ling — and find out who they’re working for, or something like that; it doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, the scattered story is all about good vs. evil, with the latter being Capt. Juan Morales (Eddie Garcia). You know he’s bad, because who else wears those orange-tinted sunglasses?

Hidden in a poncho, WIP vet Sid Haig (The Big Bird Cage) is in this confused mess, and he plays his part as if he we were in a screwball comedy. He may be on to something. That would explain Caffaro’s ‘tude with the lines she so unconvincingly growls at her he-man opponents, from “No comment, pork chop,” to “You’re pissin’ in the wind, little man.”

And so does director Eddie Romero (the Blood Island trilogy), who helmed this disappointing flick. He not only forgot to deliver a coherent plot, but also — and most importantly — the nudity. —Rod Lott

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Hellbound opens with a Star Wars-esque crawl that reads in part, “When time began the soul of darkness was thrust into the depth. Its evil split from the light of humanity to be called forth in times of weakness and despair. Satan’s emissary, Prosatanos, would prowl the Earth searing all before him with fire and blood.”

Blah blah blah. That’s a dull, wordy way of just spitting out the movie’s lone selling point: Chuck Norris battles the spawn of Satan. Hell, yes.

The evil dude in question is Prosatanos (Christopher Neame, Licence to Kill), who’s a lot balder than I would’ve pictured the devil’s envoy to be. Sealed in a tomb in a Crusades prologue, he vows revenge and gets it after pesky minorities unknowingly let him loose in 1951, and he shows up in modern-day Chicago to ball a hooker (Zoe Trilling, Night of the Demons 2). Nearby are two of Chi-Town’s finest: Sgt. Shatter (Norris, natch) and his cornrowed African-American partner, Jackson (Calvin Levels, Adventures in Babysitting). The duo battles drug suppliers and pimps with their fists, feet and tuff-talkin’: “Watch this, you little piece of shit!”

Prosatanos rips the heart out of a rabbi and high-tails it to Israel, where Shatter and Jackson are summoned for questioning. While there, they attempt to track down the supernatural slayer — or at least Shatter does; Jackson just wants to eat, but the white man keeps foiling those plans. Food is all Jackson talks about, but at least it makes for the film’s best lines, from “Why don’t you just cut my nuts off with a dull-edged butter knife?” to “Either this guy’s nuttier than a Snickers or there is some real heavy shit goin’ down.” (Note I didn’t say they were any good — just the best of what there is.)

A similar sentiment could apply to Hellbound, which finds Norris squarely in both the phases of mullet-donning and formula-tweaking. With his bankability days behind him, the bearded big cheese experimented beyond mere action, but action with kids (Sidekicks), canines (Top Dog) and demons (this). It is as silly as you would expect, which is precisely what makes it stand out among his filmography. Where else will one find such a matchup of the prince of darkness vs. the prince of Cannon Films? (Just to clarify amid his extreme right-wing views of today, Norris was the latter at the time.) —Rod Lott

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