2001 action film directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak and starring Steven Seagal. Based In Name Only on the book of the same name by John Westermann.
Orin Boyd (Seagal) is a Detroit police officer. At the start of the film, Orin saves the life of the Vice President of the United States from a group of militants, but causes a lot of havoc in doing so. Precinct captain Frank Daniels (Bruce McGill) is pissed, so he reassigns Orin to 15th precinct - the worst precinct in the city. Amidst attending anger management classes, Orin begins to suspect that local affluent drug dealer Latrell Walker (Earl "DMX" Simmons) and his fast-talking sidekick T.K. Johnson (Anthony Anderson) are engaged in shady business. However, he turns out to be wrong. Actually, it's corrupt police who are running the precinct's drug trade. Thus, he and his new partner George Clark (Isaiah Washington) set out to stop them.
This film provides examples of:
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Several high-ranking cops are pretty tough.
- Sergeant Strutt is strong enough to stop the hulking Detective Usseldinger from throwing a punch and once killed a vicious dog with his bare hands. Bonus points for being played by Michael Jai White.
- Captain Daniels and a Chief Hines both wield shotguns in the climax and are willing to use them.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing
- Strutt stops his men from bullying Boyd and is very popular for getting other cops sports tickets and finding security gigs for cops who need money from a second job. He also once fought a vicious Doberman with his bare hands to save a child. However, he turns out to be running a drug ring and is willing to commit murder.
- Daniels tries to defend Boyd during his demotion and volunteers to help him clear his name and bring down the villains in the final act. He turns out to be working with Strutt.
- The Chessmaster: Laterell has spent years planning to trick the drug ring into viewing him as another crook while baiting them to incriminate themselves, so that their arrests will clear the name of his wrongfully imprisoned brother.
- Cool Car: Latrell and T.K. buy a very flashy car that they drive around afterwards.
- Corrupt Cop: What Orin uncovers during the plot. It goes all the way up to Orin's old boss Frank.
- Cowboy Cop: Orin and this is what gets him in trouble time after time with his superiors.
- Destructive Savior: Orin is the hero and goes above and beyond defeating the bad guys, but he ends up causing enough property damage to wreck a major city the size of Detroit. He even destroys half of Detroit working a day as a traffic cop! Wait a minute...
- Disposable Love Interest: Orin's new captain is an attractive brunette. Eventually, there appears to be something developing between them. Then she goes head-first into her windshield during a collision. She gets a single mention after that, and that's it. Orin completely forgets about her.
- Face–Heel Turn: Frank tells Orin the reason he went dirty was because he got tired of laying his life on the every day just for $40,000 a year.
- Gambit Pileup: Nearly every major character has a plan going on, and occasionally crash into each other. Literally.
- Giant Mook: "Here comes the sumo negro!" Orin fights his way through several bouncers, the last one whom is huge. Doesn't stop Orin from decking the last guy halfway across the club though.
- Hidden Depths: Jerkass Useldinger spending years undercover in the KKK and bringing down a whole cell counts as this unless he was a Dirty Cop back then to.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The main villain dies this way. What adds to the "ouch" factor is the girth of the pipe he fell on and that it wasn't sharp.
- Internal Affairs:
- After his transfer, Cowboy Cop Boyd is accused of being an Internal Affairs mole by several cops who take a fast dislike to him and have something to hide.
- Captain Mulcahy is a former Internal Affairs detective who ended corrupt activities in several precincts and is viewed respectfully by her more sympathetic subordinates. She is quick to warn Cowboy Cop Boyd to rein himself in around her but is fairly reasonable about it.
- Mr. Exposition: Clark, Boyd's new partner who briefs him about a lot of the players around the station.
- The '90s: An explanation on how Latrell got a large portion of his wealth is that he created an online shopping company and sold it for a hefty sum prior to the Dot-com Bubble Burst of 2000.
- Plucky Comic Relief: TK and Henry are both fast-talking men who are helpful to Latrell and Boyd, respectively, but have few serious moments.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Hinges can be seen as a Obstructive Bureaucrat due to his dislike of Boyd’s cowboy tendencies but at the end of the day? He’s one of very few cops who is clean and eventually sides with Boyd to take down the really dirty cops.
- Captain Mulcahy also turns out to be a fair boss, willing to listen to Boyd's theory and not coming down to hard on him.
- Self-Defenseless: A bunch of corrupt cops use their tasers on each other for the sake of showing off, bets, and entertainment. Boyd also gets his share, and he beats them all up.
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Spiritual Successor: Part of a trio of films by Bartkowiak, starting with Romeo Must Die and followed by Cradle 2 the Grave of martial arts buddy cop films (Seagal, Jet Li) mixed with rap artists/urban culture, with an added dose of Tom Arnold. - Token Good Cop: Cowboy Cop Boyd is transferred to a "shit hole" new precinct in the opening scene and comes to learn that it is full of corrupt and/or thuggish cops, with the only two named decent ones being his new partner George Clark and precinct Captain Mulcahy, a former Internal Affairs investigator.
- Western Terrorists: The Vice President's Secret Service/Detroit Police convoy gets attacked in the prologue by Michigan-based militiamen. Nothing's mentioned on why they're trying to take him out.
- Wicked Cultured: Strutt.
