It's the 4th of July and the members of the Seattle S.W.A.T. team are looking forward to enjoying the holiday, until they get the call to arms from department head Ellen Dwyer (Adrianne Palicki, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). It seems they are to work with the DEA because a shipping container with billions of dollars in contraband is set to arrive today. It should be a no-fuss, no-muss mission, but naturally, things go awry.
Commander Travis Hall (Sam Jaeger, Eli Stone) and his partner, Sophia Gutierrez (Kyra Zagorsky, Helix), along with the other members of their team are overrun at the shipping container and an RPG missile makes quick work of the DEA agents. The container actually imprisons a large, heavily-muscled black man with a tattoo on his back of a scorpion, who becomes the ward of the S.W.A.T. team since the DEA agents are dead. Although he is initially quite silent, "Scorpion" (Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite, Spawn) soon reveals to Travis that he is the holder of billions of dollars in intel and the people who were planning on purchasing him will soon be coming for him - and coming hard.
At first, Travis doesn't believe him, but as events unfold and their facility becomes compromised, he starts to believe that Scorpion, while not a particularly good man, is someone he wants on his side. Although the site is on lockdown, it is clear that Franklin (Mike Dopud), the man who wants Scorpion, will stop at nothing to get him. He has a man on the inside and a hacker on the outside who is helping him manipulate things at the S.W.A.T. site. As the various S.W.A.T. members fight for their very lives under attack from Franklin's men, all the while trying to determine who among them is working against them, Scorpion proves to be a formidable ally. But will it be enough to save them?
S.W.A.T.: Under Siege has some decent action sequences, but the cheesy use of CG blood is fairly obvious, especially when one guy gets shot in the head and the blood drips the wrong way (gravity - it's the law!). Also, Michael Jai White in the role of Scorpion was incredibly overdone, as far as his acting and diction were concerned. I'm not sure what accent he was trying to portray or whether he was just doing his best Shakespearean stage impression, but it was a bit laughable. Despite all of that, we enjoyed the movie for what it was, a fairly brainless and predictable action flick. I especially enjoyed the character of Angela Jefferson (Marci T. House), the front gate guard. She's plucky and funny and carries a bad ass shotgun named "Dirty Bitch" and she provides a little bit of levity in the film. While S.W.A.T.: Under Siege won't win any awards and is not necessarily worth a purchase, I didn't consider it a waste of my time and it's always fun to watch giantess Adrianne Palicki kick a little ass.
