Beyond The Law

Saxon (Charlie Sheen) is a sadistic cop who, flashbacks reveal, was abused by his uncle/guardian. He's troubled by his racial heritage, has nightmares, and suffers from sleep deprivation. When his bigoted boss fires him for insubordination, Saxon is persuaded to work as a decoy narc by an investigator for the Arizona Attorney General's office, Conroy Price (Courtney B. Vance). Saxon's impersonation of a low-life biker isn't initially convincing, but a biker groupie and police uniform fetishist named Virgil (Leon Rippy) agrees to play Henry Higgins. Saxon makes the impressionable Virgil a mock deputy and quickly builds up his bad-boy reputation. While ogling photographer Renee (Linda Fiorentino), who's paying to capture a biker group called the Jackals for posterity, Saxon passes the macho entrance exam by crashing his bike into a redneck bar. Saxon presses gang leader Blood (Michael Madsen) to do business with him, even though he's an outsider. He also tries to keep the rest of the Jackals at arm's length, because their initiation rites involve committing two felonies. While Conroy smacks his lips over drug busts and Renee pouts about the imitation biker's safety, Saxon is forced to snort cocaine, which unleashes his repressed wild side. Saxon descends into increasingly degenerate behavior and is eventually arrested, which jeopardizes the upcoming sting. He's released from jail and fails his big test during a convenience store robbery, when Blood guns down a store clerk. In Blood's trailer, the rogue cop and the Jackal kingpin forget their transitory brotherhood and fight to the finish. A coda reveals that drug raids set up through Saxon obliterated much of the bikers' drug trade in Arizona.

A distant cousin of BLUE STEEL (1990) and TIGHTROPE (1984), BEYOND THE LAW ends with star Charlie Sheen stripped to the waist, walking into the desert sunset like a kind of Jesus of the Narcs. From the macho rites of passage to the psychological babble about cops on the verge of a nervous breakdown, BEYOND THE LAW is a cornucopia of bad movie cliches. The plot is propped up by outrageous coincidences and motivations, and the casting undermines the well-worn "every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints" theme. Former Brat Packer Sheen's smug features suggest that the greatest trauma he's ever suffered was having his allowance cut off. Padded with metaphorical penis-comparison confrontations, repetitive pull-backs from the neurotic edge, pointless romantic interludes and childhood flashbacks, BEYOND THE LAW rides all over that menacing biker terrain like a designer from Disneyland who's just opened the world's first Hell's Angels Theme Park. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, extensive nudity, sexual situations, substance abuse.) leave a comment