Raw Justice (1994)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Good Cop Bad Cop is one of a handful of 90's films that were promoted around the sex appeal of the world's number one pinup of the time, Pamela Anderson. Like all of the other flicks, Anderson once again is the best thing about this one. Truthfully, her role here is not much more than an excuse for her to strip off for a couple of soft-core sex scenes. I guess, strictly speaking, many people will think this this isn't enough of a reason for the film to exist and fair enough. But to be honest, I find Pammy very attractive and always get a kick out of watching her in sexy roles. And this film is no different. Aside from Anderson, we have a really quite stupid plot-line that I can't in all honesty be bothered summarising. The lead actor is David Keith who I thought was really terrible quite honestly. He looked like he had been dragged through a hedge and his character was unbelievably unsympathetic. Amazingly, he is the 'good cop' of the title, yet his heavy handed tactics like smashing up a bondsman's office with a baseball bat, punching innocent people out and treating Anderson's character with a fair degree of misogyny means that I couldn't help but think that the film should really have been called 'Bad Cop, Marginally Better Cop'. The cast is rounded off with three other B-Movie regulars, Charles 'Supervixens' Napier, Robert 'Airplane!' Hays and Stacy 'Longriders' Keach; all of whom do what is needed and no more, yet all are preferable to David Keith.The film is an action thriller, yet it definitely plays things for comedy value quite a bit so it's fairly light-hearted mostly. If it wasn't blessed with a couple of hot Pamela Anderson erotic scenes, I am guessing I would have marked this one down a notch or two but she saves it from irrelevance and gives it its lasting interest value. It's overall a bit of dumb fun though.

A cool dude named Mace (Keith), who would have to be cool because his name is Mace, is an ex-cop and now a bounty hunter. He doesn't shave, wears sunglasses, smokes, drinks, and rides his chopper. He's also handy with gun-shooting and brawling. So, to reiterate, he's a cool guy. So when Mayor Stiles' (Napier) daughter is mysteriously killed, he runs straight to Mace's pad, because he needs someone who will work "outside the law" and by his own rules, to get to the truth and find the killer. A goofy guy named Mitch McCullum (Hays) is the prime suspect in the murder but of course is innocent. So Mace and Mitch go on the run (as the original odd couple, of course) in an attempt to get justice, perhaps of the raw variety. Along their quest is a prostitute named Sarah (Anderson) who probably doesn't need to be there, but no one's complaining. And what do Lieutenant Atkins (Rossi) and Deputy Mayor Jenkins (Keach) have to do with all this intrigue? You just may have to find out today...Here's another David A. Prior movie from the time when he wasn't with AIP anymore, just like Felony (1994), and even some Felony cast members are reunited here, namely Napier and Rossi. The Felony formula of "reluctant buddies on the run" is tried once again, but this time instead of Joe Don Baker and Jeffrey Combs, it's David Keith and Robert Hays. Prior fashioned a tongue-in-cheek action/comedy with a silly overall vibe that's pretty accessible to casual viewers. Prior clearly was unashamed to make a movie of stupid, undemanding fun. Sure, it's dumb and all, but it's entertaining enough to not be annoying. It's perfect for 1994, and the cast of B-movie names would surely be enough to garner a rental at the old video store, especially with Pam front and center to attract potential renters.Leo Rossi does yet another wacky "Southern" accent, Stacy Keach is almost unrecognizable, Pam Anderson does the prerequisite nudity, and Robert Hays does what we've always wanted from him, Robert Hays-Fu in a fight scene. Charles Napier barks his lines as we all expect, and David Keith is the main hero. Keith really seemed to give his all and be very invested in the role of Mace. But given the chance to be Mace, wouldn't you throw yourself into it too? Of course, being the ultimate gentleman, when Robert Hays drops off his date at the end of the night, he gives her one of those Troll dolls that were so big at the time. And his date doesn't even care about it. Apparently she doesn't find that shock of upturned pink hair charming, so she deserves to die.And what would a DTV movie of the day be without some time-honored clichés: sax on the soundtrack, a mysterious and sought after computer disc, mindless shooting, mindless chases, a handful of blow-ups, a barfight or two, an exploding helicopter, and an absurd blackmail plot, among other notable examples. We've reviewed many of Prior's movies on this site, because we're fans of his, and he'd refined his style at this point to its most professional level to date. Odds are, if you're reading this, you're a fan too, or are at least interested in becoming one. So while it's no Deadly Prey (1987), Raw Justice is a pretty harmless way to spend an hour and a half.

**SPOILERS*** Muddled big city crime drama involving this former New Orleans cop now turned bounty hunter Mace, David Keith, getting involved in finding the city Mayor's David Stites, Charles Napler, daughter Donna's, April Bogenschultz, murderer.As things turn out the #1 suspect is Donna's date the night that she was killed Mitch McCullum, Robert Hayes. Mitch was anything but the man of Donna's dreams who gave him the send off without as much as a good-by in what a dud he was with her. It's later that evening as she was taking a shower that this guy Bennett, Ted Prior, snuck into her apartment and ended up strangling her. we soon find out that Bennett was working for Mayor Stites' deputy Bob Jenkins, Stacey Keach, who's looking to blackmail the mayor by planting, in a tell all book that Donna's was in the process of writing, the false story that he molested Donna when she was a little girl and end up getting his job by forcing Stites to resign from office.In covering his tracks in Donna's murder Jenkins later guns down Bennett as he comes to get his payment for offing her leaving no one to implicate him in her murder. It's when Mace starts to suspect that Donna's murder was political not a random act of violence that Jenkins gets hold of members of the New Orleans police department to knock both Mace as well as McCullum off to keep them from bringing the truth out. We get the heat turned on at least an extra 20 degrees in the movie with the appearance of the 36-24-35 Sarah played by the sexy "Baywatch" lifeguard Pamela Anderson. It was Sarah while turning tricks who lost her working clothes, to Mace no less, and has been trying to track them down ever since. This combination of bounty hunter pasty and dizzy blond in the end puts an end to Bob Jenkins' attempt to not only grab the keys to the city in becoming its next mayor but later to become the states's governor!With all three-Mace Mitch & Sarah- now a threat to Jenkins' future political ambitions he gets his paid off stooges in the New Orleans Police Department as well as a number of local hoods to try to both arrest and gun them down in their being responsible in poor Donna Stites death. Jenkins also has bail bondsman Bernie, Bernard Hocks, get his head bashed in with a baseball bat in order to keep his mouth shut about what he knows about Donna Stites murder. **SPOILERS*** In the end Mayor Stites in a news conference staged by Jenkins to announce his resigning as mayor instead lets the cat out of the bag, on live TV, in the fact that it was Jenkins , not Hayes or even Mace, who murdered his daughter! The films exciting ending sequence has the now exposed killer and blackmailer Bob Jenkins try to make his escape to an unnamed Caribbean or South American banana republic, where he would feel quite at home in, by holding Mayor Stites as a hostage. What turns out to be Jenkins biggest problem is not the police FBI or SWAT team that's hot on his tail but the person, the helicopter pilot, who's to fly him out of the country!Lots of action with an explosive pre 9/11 air crash into a high rise office building and actor David Keith doing a pretty good hot headed Sonny Corleone "Godfather" number, while dressed in drag as a hooker, on one of those bail jumpers he's out to bring in. By far the best reason to see the movie is the hot as a pistole Pamela Anderson, as Sarah, getting it on with Mace in a deserted alley that came very very close to getting the movie an X rating!

OK, so there is virtually no plot in this movie, the acting is atrocious at best and there are some very annoying characters in it. I know it sounded like there was going to be a but...., well there isn't, this movie is rubbish and it would be a waste of time to watch it.