Caught In The Crossfire

Introduction

Detectives Briggs (Chris Klein) and Shepherd (Adam Rodriguez) are driving around Grand Rapids late at night with confidential informant Tino (Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson), trying to work out what is going on. Tino claims that the recent murder of an undercover policeman was commited by corrupt cops who have framed local boxer and hoodlum Michael Pips (Sydney Hall).

The word is out and the hunt is on for Pips, so Briggs and Shepherd need to reach him fast before anyone else gets to him. Unfortunately they arrive late and a full scale gunfight is already under way between Pips' crew and the local cops. Shepherd tries to calm Pips down as last man standing and give himself up, whilst Briggs is ready to just shoot him, but a trio of cops then turns up and blows him away.

Cue the interrogation of the partners post incident by Lt Michaels (Michael Matthias) and Capt Emmett (Richard T.Jones), with Briggs story not tying up with Shepherd. Shepherd is making all sorts of accusations about police corruption as he and the others tracks back over the last few days to work out just what has happened…

Visual

Overall the picture is acceptable but there are portions where it just looks washed out and blurry.

Overall

There appears to be a genre within the cop genre for gritty street level films, where the action is down in da hood with a sniff of corruption. This release is yet another one of those and even has an attempt at a hint of street cred by the appearance of rapper 50 Cent. The latter isn't really surprising as the film itself is a release from his own film company, Cheetah Vision or CV. Bizarrely, or not, the credits for Exec Producers also includes Tim Roth, which surprised me.

Sadly despite the inclusion of Roth as a Producer, the film is sadly lacking and rather cliché ridden. We're used to the old good cop bad cop routine, it's a staple of police drama, but here it appears that everyone just wants to play bad cop in an attempt to keep the audience guessing. This inevitably involves a lot of shouting. And yet more shouting. I'm not sure whether the actors actually had access to the full script and were just hoping that they would be the bad guys as they're generally the more interesting roles to play. Sadly, that leaves no one to play off and you're just left with a bit of a mess.

What essentially does happen is that events unfold and are unravelled, leading to a huge shootout at the end. It goes on forever, or seems to, so I get the feeling that everything else was just shoe horned in to get us to the big final set piece.

I'm pretty sure that this will find its own level and audience but I was left pretty unimpressed by the whole thing.