Search - Caught in the Crossfire [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

Worth Buying

S. Gardner | Los Angeles, CA | 08/16/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The 50cent produced drama about the investigation into police corruption in a southern town provided enough action and plot twists to be enjoyable. All the actors gave solid performances, with 50cent in a slightly lesser, but different role than the characters he's played in the past. Adam Rodriguez was fantastic. Chris Kline was good, though southern accents may not be his strong suit. The storyline twists are probably good enough to keep you from guessing the "real" villain right off. Check out this movie."

Very good movie!

troup girl | california | 09/10/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"this is a very good movie; it delivers what it promises, and is well acted."

Awful Cop Drama, Some of the Worst Acting You'll Ever See

Alexander M. Walker | Chicago, IL USA | 08/15/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It takes a village to raise a child. In its original context it means a child benefits from being raised by a variety of personalities and people of varying experiences; the combination creating a more rounded individual. But what if the village raises a serial killer? Are the parents to be blamed for the bad egg? Or should the village, which would have received credit for producing an upstanding youth under different circumstances, be held accountable for failures as well? Apply this idea to film and you have to wonder whom to blame when a film turns out unforgivably awful. The director? The writer? The lead actors? For Caught in the Crossfire it's all of the above, there's little redeeming value to be found.

Cop dramas seem to fall out of the sky like rain. Each year you could fill buckets with the sheer volume that fall from Hollywood, and yet, just like rain, you're not necessarily going to want to drink any of it. The cop drama is a film mainstay and when paired with the increasingly common storytelling device of multiple, conflicting perspectives you get a mixed bag of old school clichés and more recently established stereotypical twists. If done correctly the new might just manage to outweigh the old, but Caught in the Crossfire doesn't do anything right. At its best, it only ever figures out how not to do everything wrong.

The film starts with everything already spiraling out of control. Officers Shepherd (Adam Rodriguez) and Briggs (Chris Klein) are escorting an informant (50 Cent) back to the station in their squad car when they reroute to lend support to a shoot-out in progress between officers and a gang member. Things get out of hand and both the informant and the shooter end up dead. It's clear to Briggs and Shepherd that it wasn't an accident, but it's hard to make that known when they suspect a cadre of dirty cops are behind it all. After Briggs offers a condemning account of the night, it's up to Shepherd to set the record straight and figure out who's playing which side and from what angle.

Shepherd and the audience slowly sift through the evidence proffered in a series of ridiculously hokey good cop-bad cop interrogation scenes. You know there's a bad cop in the room, you just don't know how many; but one thing is for certain: all of the actors want to play bad cops. There's no variation whatsoever in how each actor plays their role as they all speak in the gruff, halting pattern of officer's who've spent one too many years on a bad beat and just want the nightmare to end. The rough and ready officer of the law archetype is a good one, and so every cop drama uses it. The character always exists. It only works as part of the makeup of a variety of characters. In Caught in the Crossfire there is no variety. Everyone is playing the badass cop, and so instead of a few level heads acting as the control group to let us see how bad those other cops are, everyone just spouts melodramatic lines about living every second against wire on a street that will kill you just as soon as let you take a step. Every actor in the film suffers under the weight of this curse, but then one goes above and beyond the call of bad acting.

Chris Klein ups the ante. He doesn't just act horribly; it's like he doesn't even know what role he's playing. Is he a cop on the edge of his sanity? Is he a cop who knows something no one else does? Or was Chris Klein attempting to create a character which was a mix somewhere between Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and Michael Chiklis in The Shield? It seems to be the latter, and in the right film you just might think that was genius - if he pulled it off. Instead, Klein comes across as a giggling oaf who smirks and attempts to sound as badass as possible delivering laughably written cop dialogue. You'd feel bad for the guy if you weren't laughing so hard at how he plays the part.

The hi-def transfer is the one place where the film doesn't blunder, and more because the cinematographer seems to have a future. The style of the framing was well-suited for the film's high-concentration of interrogation scenes and the scenes where things actually happened looked quite good. The cinematography is genuinely the best part of the film.

If you're looking for a cop movie to turn into a drinking game, Caught in the Crossfire is an excellent candidate.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

Besides some outtakes there's nothing to speak of here, unless you think all the basic essentials of what makes a Blu-ray disc a Blu-ray disc (like HD quality video) count as extras (like the disc's case does)."

Worst movie I've rented in a long time.

Robert | 08/04/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Not going to waste much time on this. Don't bother with this. It has got to be the worst thing I've seen in a long time. The writing is cheesy, the acting is horrible, the story boring and contrived. Save your time and money."