Review of The Rookie (1990) by Jordan R — 12 May 2008

Boilerplate Eastwood action fare that has a few moments of interest. The jokes are pretty subtle - the punchlines are generally delivered with enough venom (since they're basically all between Sheen and Eastwood) that you wonder if they're completely meant to be funny.

The villains and the plot are nothing special; though Clint takes a departure from standard cop film fare by making his principals auto theft detectives instead of robbery or homicide investigators, it's mostly to give justification for the large amount of auto stuntwork.

Clint's Nick Pulovski character might as well be Dirty Harry, though he has a much fouler mouth and dresses much more relaxedly. Sheen's Ackerman character has a lot more range, and Sheen manages well with being indecisive and inexperienced, as well as his berserker transformation into his unwilling mentor.

Watch for: the beginning and opening sequences, Sheen "arresting" a couple of Rottweilers, the escape from the exploding warehouse, and Sheen's return to the bar where he got beaten up. He flips out "like a ninja" (to use dated internet in-joke parlance) and proceeds to beat up the entire clientèle and a pit bull, kill another pit bull, and burn the place to the ground when they don't want to answer his questions. Good scene.

Not "Dirty Harry," though it tries to take some jabs at the beloved Eastwood cop franchise. Fun enough, mostly for fans of Eastwood and the genre.