L.A.P.D.: To Protect And To Serve (2001)

Touches You

Good movie but grossly overrated

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

If you forget about "authenticity" and whether or not the bullet left the body at the right angle or that no-one can shoot straight because they've forgotten their training and just panicked and started shooting wildly or that someone needed longer arms than are humanly possible or whatever and just had a look at the story, you'll find a good movie.You see how easily and innocently unsuspecting straight cop gets pulled into web of bad cops and how well it sticks. You see futility and desperation as he tries to escape and his final resolve. You also see some pretty bizarre acting by D. Hopper as he seems to be playing it for a black comedy.As far as movies go this does rate higher than a home-made video but not much farther along the path to Hollywood BlockBuster than say a very amateurish B grade show. Because this was based on actual events the story is the movie and it's interesting to see how it all took place or at least how easy it is for this corruption to be going on.My rating 7/10 (Distinctive)

Never before have I witnessed the total ineptness of an entire movie. Starting with the most generic trailer I've ever seen, this one lost me from the get-go. About a minute into the first scene shootout, I got the feeling that the Sergeant was going to break it up and show the rookies all the mistakes they were making during this training excercise. In the next scene, the boys are celebrating like they won the first football game of the season. Anyone care about those dead cops? I also love the scene where Hopper runs into Madsen after hours, and the L.A.P.D. office looks like a bank on Sunday. About halfway through I started calling it "Mayberry P.D."

yes folks it's true. This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I swear it was like watching a soft core porn movie without the sex just the incredibly bad acting and ridiculous scenes. It was as if Michael Madsen wasn't even trying to act well. I guess he knew where this movie was going. I thought he was a good actor (Reservoir Dogs, The Getaway, Natural Born Killers etc.) I'm not saying this didn't have moments that were entertaining. It's just that it wasn't meant to be so hilarious. For example, in one scene (of many when the dirty cops were stealing even more merchandise) (this time they even had a cube van to move the stuff) an old hobbling homeless derilict appears from behind an abandoned car and sees what is going on. The one cop says to the fattest cop you've ever seen "hey get that S. O. B." so he chases after this hobbling old homeless guy starts firing his gun from only a few feet away, can't take him down and comes back to report "I don't think he saw anything anyway". Couldn't figure out how a great like Hopper appeared in this flick but I gues the reason is the $$$$. They sure didn't mine killing innocent bystanders for the shear joy of viewer shock but then you get used to that after the first few minutes of the movie. Even the last scene that had Durning in in which he went to I.A. to help his son. Now the bad cop in I. A. thinks that he has to kill Durning and his own I. A. partner but the way he does it is idiotic. He shoots his partner with his own gun then shoots Durning with the same gun. Plants the same gun on his partner and pulls out this unfired gun and plants it on Durning as if this will fly. As if they don't do bullistic testing on murdered cops or people murdered in Internal Affairs offices. The fat cop was almost a caricature. I mean he was so ridiculous as a cop that it was hilarious and entertaing. He could probably a pretty good comedic actor.I was lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to see this on pay tv so I didn't have to rent it. I hear they even put a big picture of Hopper on the box to entice more rentals.

To Protect and Serve: Protect us the viewer and serve the acting to the dogs. Why oh Why did I rent this? Because of Dennis Hopper. After all, he has made some good films, even very good ones. I saw him on the cover, and instead of checking IMDB first, I took a chance. This trash is the Plan Nine from Outer Space version of modern law enforcement. If I were a LAPD employee, a LA criminal, a citizen of LA, even an alien from Mars, I would demand that all money used in this production be used to burn all copies of this wherever they may be. Considering the absolute total ineptness of the acting, directing, and writing efforts here, there may be only enough loose coin to burn just one copy. Dennis Hopper was in this for 3 maybe 4 minutes. And you could plainly see he was over acting. Dennis, do not add this to your filmography. This is a very, very bad film.