"Zero Tolerance"-  

"We have a vigilante out there executing people and he happens 
to be one of our own."

My thoughts before watching this movie...The plot (as Laura 
Capozzola uses on her RP site): "Robert Patrick plays an FBI 
agent [Jeff Douglas] who is ambushed with two of his partners 
in Mexico while there to pick up a member of the White Hand 
drug cartel.  His partners are killed, his family is brutally 
murdered and he decides to go after the members of the cartel, 
one by one." 

Gee...how original...

Ladies and Gentlemen, what we have here is the stereotypical 
Hollywood Action Movie. Don't stand too close to your 
television speakers or you might go deaf. Or you can just play 
the entire movie on "mute". It's not like it's crucially 
important to your understanding of the plot that you actually 
hear the dialogue.

This movie follows a definite formula. And since it is a Robert
Patrick movie, that formula includes several scenes of Jeff 
shooting said members of the drug cartel with one gun in each
hand (also see "Hong Kong '97, "Decoy", and a few others I 
haven't personally seen, but I know they have this element). 

Of course, the White Hand Cartel is made up of a bunch of half-
wits, as per action movie requirement. For example, they are 
convinced they have 'taken care of the problem (Jeff)' after 
they basically kidnapped him and then leave him alone in the car 
to 'go do some business' in a casino. They don't think Jeff is 
smart enough to realize that they plan to blow up the car. 
After they press the remote detonator, they sit and laugh like 
cackling witches over their brilliance. Meanwhile, Jeff is 
running down the street. 

Of course, since he is in an action movie, Jeff could only have 
realized the car would explode about two seconds before it blew, 
so his leg is on fire as he's running from it. 

The Cartel don't realize he's still alive until he walks into 
the casino later on and shoots one of their members point blank 
in what the Cartel leader describes as "pure kamikaze shit!" 

The best parts of this movie are the conversations between the 
FBI agents back at Headquarters. After the aforementioned 
shooting takes place, word travels back to Jeff's superior, who 
laughs. "We have spent millions of dollars trying to federally 
convict this guy and Jeff just goes and plugs him," he asks. 
Then he laughs some more and says, "that's terrific!" So 
basically, the FBI just sits on their duffs and watches as Jeff 
"plugs" the rest of the Cartel. Hey, it's saving them a lot of 
trouble!

Basically, by the time the end credits are rolling, we realize 
that there is nothing about this movie that is unpredictable. 
Not only do we know Jeff will successfully execute all members 
of the Cartel, but we know what order he will do it in! 
Obviously, the one he was sent to Mexico to pick up - the one 
that kidnapped him and is pretty much the source of all of his 
problems - will be the *last* one to go. 

We can also accurately predict which of the bad guys is most 
likely to be killed by his own men: the "bad guy with a 
conscience" that is - by some Hollywood Action Movie Law - 
required to be in every group of bad guys. 

Other predictable Action-Movie elements include: lots of 
explosions and big fireballs, people running around shooting at 
each other in slow motion, a hero who can stand in the middle 
of a hail of bullets and not get hit but who gets a tiny cut on 
his lip when he falls off his motorcycle, a hero who rides a 
motorcycle (I probably should have said that first), and the 
female friend whose worry over the hero's state of mind drags 
her into a dangerous situation which the hero has to rescue her 
from. 

I'm gonna go on a little tangent here. I am a big Mel Gibson 
fan. One of my favorite Mel Gibson movies is "Lethal Weapon" 
where he played a cop named Martin Riggs whose wife was 
murdered, making Riggs into a literal lethal weapon because he 
no longer cared if he lived or died. He would willingly pull 
kamikaze stunts to catch the bad guy because he no longer had a 
reason to live. Sound familiar? 

Jeff Douglas is basically a carbon copy of Martin Riggs. In the 
original "Lethal Weapon," there is a scene where Riggs cries 
over a picture of his dead wife and sticks his gun in his mouth 
but can't bring himself to pull the trigger. In "Zero 
Tolerance," there is a scene where Jeff cries over a photo 
album of his dead wife and kids. He also tries to blow his 
brains out, but is interrupted by the above-mentioned female. 
To be honest, the scene in "Lethal Weapon" is much harder to 
watch. Probably because, since "Zero Tolerance" is so 
predictable, you never really think Jeff will shoot himself, 
mainly because the bad guys aren't dead yet.

To summarize, this movie is a mindless action thriller *only*. 
It doesn't require much thought, but it's definitely fun. :)

~Diandra Hollman