Renegades (1989)

They trusted no one. Until they had to trust each other.

It suffers from the pitfalls of many other 1980s action films, such as plot holes, silly twists and predictability of formula, but there is a very good action film here that's more than a time waster for the so inclined.

Young Guns (1988) stars Sutherland and Phillips (by now firm real life friends) team up again, this time in Phioladelphia with Sutherland as a maverick copper working undercover and Phillips as a Lakota Indian. The two of them are thrown together by fate when a case Sutherland is working on goes bad and Phillips' brother is killed and a sacred Lakota lance is stolen in the process. They are complete polar opposites as characters and struggle to get on with each other to achieve their respective goals. We know they will find a happy ground and kick ass, and with the actors chemistry well founded, it works real well as a buddy buddy action piece.

Director Jack Sholder (The Hidden) has a good knack for action construction, be it shoot-outs or punch-ups, but the highlight here is a blunderbuss extended car chase through the city that wouldn't be out of place in a far bigger budgeted blockbuster. However, with the more character based sections of film the director is not so adept, struggling to get much out of Robert Knepper's villain and letting Jami Gertz wander in and out as a love interest type without any real rhyme or reason. But if frantic action is what you like, you get it here by the bucket load, just enjoy that ride and forget any hope of depth elsewhere. 6.5/10

***Crime thriller in Philadelphia featuring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips***

On a case to nail a bad cop, an undercover cop in Philadelphia (Kiefer Sutherland) teams-up with an AmerIndian (Lou Diamond Phillips) to get back a sacred Lakota lance stolen during a diamond heist.

“Renegades” (1989) is a crime drama/thriller that mostly takes place in the working class districts of the big city. There’s one brief scene on a reservation and a longer nighttime sequence at a wooded ranch outside the city. Some of the action scenes are a little overblown to the point of being eye-rolling, but the troubled partnership between the two protagonists is decent. Jami Gertz is on hand in a small role.

Log this under decent but underwhelming big city cop/crime thriller. Every Dirty Harry movie is a superior choice. But, if you favor the actors, check it out.

The movie runs 1 hour, 46 minutes and was shot in Toronto and Camp Samac Oshawa, Ontario, with I presume some establishing shots of Philadelphia.

GRADE: C+/B-

"Renegades" is a routine film at every predictable twist of the unimaginative story. There is lots of wholesale destruction on offer to excite the easily excitable, but unfortunately there is very little else to engage the average viewer. The film also struggles to flesh out the running time and instead of developing a more in depth story with vividly drawn characters what we are left with is the spectacle of Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips constantly quarrelling and being at odds with one another before realising the only way they are going to make any progress is if they co-operate and play nice. This is an unimpressive film overall and there is no reason to believe anyone will ever have cause to remember it never mind entertaining a burning desire to actually sit down and watch it.