Omar Epps is an undercover cop on a mission to bring down LL Cool J’s criminal enterprise. After an unspecified time on the job, his superiors pull him from the assignment when the line between good and bad becomes blurred, but he goes back in when it’s determined that he’s the only one who can pull off the take down. The plot is entirely predictable as it’s similar to any number of undercover cop films, but it’s not even a middling entry for the genre. It has some glaring pacing issues and criminally underuses Pam Grier as a fellow detective. 

On the day of his 21st birthday, young Rex Smith celebrates the end of his pirate apprenticeship, a situation that was caused due to a misunderstanding by his nurse Angela Lansbury, and vows to bring the end to the pirates as his sense of duty dictates. This sense of duty and the ineptitude of the pirate band (they are well known to be lenient on fellow orphans) are underlying themes through the entire story. The art direction is faithful to its theatre roots, offering the viewer the sense of being transported into the middle of a stage performance. The whole production is quite amusing and delightfully campy, most fully embraced by Kevin Kline as the Pirate King.   

During World War II, disgraced former lieutenant Clint Eastwood learns from a German prisoner that there is a large stash of gold being held in an occupied area of France. With no love for the Army, he gathers together a motley crew to acquire the gold. It’s very weird to see a World War II movie where the Allied characters are not good guys nor part of a noble cause. There are other bizarre choices from the catchy, but oddly psychedelic poppy theme song and Donald Sutherland also broadly playing a hippie in an era almost thirty years before they existed.  

When they first meet, Michael Boatman, the first Black officer at the Sheriff’s department, and Lori Petty, the first female, don’t really get along, but that changes as they each encounter outright contempt and hostility from the rest of the white male force. When Boatman becomes suspicious of police activities after the arrest of Ice Cube, the two team up to find the truth about the investigation. While being a little too good versus bad in its portrayal, t’s a fairly well acted exploration of police corruption and the artifice of the thin blue line. I was surprised how little Ice Cube actually was in the film as he is prominent in the cover images for the film. 

After going against the orders of his mob boss, gangster James Fox goes into hiding in a hippy haven. There he meets Mick Jagger, a former rock star, and the two’s experiences gradually meld their personalities. I admittedly didn’t get much out of this at all, but there are definite explorations of identity of all sorts going on. The first half is hyper violent while the latter scenes in the hippy household are explicitly sexual.