What type of justice?

Extreme justice, y’all!

In this 1993 film, Lou Diamond Phillips stars as Jeff Powers.  Who is Jeff Powers?  He’s a cop!  He wants to keep the street safe!  Sometimes, he knows that you have to be willing to break the rules!  He’s a cop who does things his way!

Okay, is that enough exclamation points?  I’m not just using them to be obnoxious.  The film is pretty much just one big exclamation point.  The action is hyperintense and the film is full of characters who always seem like they’re just one step away from exploding.  No one in this film is particularly calm or laid back.  From the start, everything is dialed to eleven and it just keeps going higher and higher.

After Jeff is put on probation for roughing up a suspect, he receives an invitation to join an elite squad of detective.  Led by the charismatic Detective Dan Vaughn (Scott Glenn, giving a performance that is so over-the-top that he yells straight at the camera at one point), the Special Investigative Section is the best of the bed.  Upon joining, Jeff finds himself a member of a sacred fraternity of law enforcers.  Working with men like the always amused Detective Larson (Yaphet Kotto) and the somewhat paranoid Angel (Andrew Divoff), Jeff finds himself tracking some of the biggest criminals in the city.

What Jeff also discovers is that SIS does more than just arrest criminals.  The SIS has been given an unofficial license to kill and they end up executing as many people as they take to jail.  Often times, Vaughn will tells the men to allow a crime to be committed so that they can then dispense their own brand of justice.  In the film’s most disturbing scene, the members of SIS wait until after a woman has been raped in an alley before they move to neutralize her attackers.  When Jeff finally decides that he can’t be a part of all this and tries to reveal what’s going on, he discovers that the SIS has some support in some very high places.  Who cares if the SIS is allowing crimes to be committed or if an innocent person occasionally gets caught in the crossfire?  At least they’re taking care of the criminals!

Extreme Justice is a crude and energetic film and one that is based on some of the stories that spread about the LAPD’s RAMPART division in the 90s.  That the film works is a testament to the performances of Phillips, Kotto, and Glenn and also the direction of Mark L. Lester.  An exploitation vet who occassionally made big studio action films as well, Lester keeps the pace moving at breakneck speed and, even more importantly, he allows both sides to have their say.  While Jeff is upset about SIS’s methods, Detective Vaughn is correct when he says that his unit is targeting the worst of the worst.  It makes for an unusually intelligent exploitation film, one that leaves the audience with a lot to consider.  How far would you go to keep your neighborhood safe?

Previous entries in 2025’s 14 Days Of Paranoia:

1. The Fourth Wall (1969)