Opening with a robbery by black-hooded men who carry automatic weapons and mean business, "S.W.A.T." makes a questionable hero out of handsome officer Jim Street (Colin Farrell), who accidentally shoots a hostage--getting him into hot water with the captain for defying an order to stand down. When Lt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson (Samuel L. Jackson) insists that not only Street be on his S.W.A.T. team of six and even recruits a woman, Chris Sanchez (Michelle Rodriguez), the stage is set for a cat-and-mouse game between the six and a newly-captured international bandit, Alex (Olivier Martinez), who is wanted in ten countries for drug selling and arms smuggling. As Alex is scheduled to be taken from the local jail to a federal prison, he offers $100 million to anyone who can spring him out, an offer which a few corrupt cops and a number of others could not resist. (How exactly Alex can be trusted to pay off and where his benefactor could go to find safety from an inevitable, international manhunt is another question, but action-adventure pictures ask us to suspend disbelief).

Olivier Martinez is the best thing about the pic, performing in the role of a ruthless outlaw who is well groomed, speaks good English with a French accent, and is called a Frog three times by those who are chasing him. Martinez, acting as Diane Lane's lover in "Unfaithful" is known for work in art-house fare like "Before Night Falls" and "The Chambermaid on the Titanic," but does well here, showing himself to be anything but a small- time hoodlum. Others in the cast do workmanlike acting, with Michelle Rodriguez, who got notice from Hollywood for her role in "Girlfight," flashing her usual don't-mess-with-me scowl throughout (except for showing herself to be one of the guys by roaring with laughter during her S.W.A.T. team party).

While "S.W.A.T." is calculated to get the adrenalin pumping, an almost non-stop string of episodes filmed in seventy-five L.A. locations, there's nothing here that we have not already seen. Give it credit, though, for cluing in us in the audience who would never get a chance to take a look at the Marine-line training camps that put the recruits through their paces.

While we realize that the three divisions of national service The Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps frequently compete with one another, we may not have understood how much backbiting exists within one large city's S.W.A.T. team. The captain has issues with the guys who defied his order during the bank robbery and, like Yasser Arafat hoping that his prime minister will fail, is determined to humiliate the guys who went over the top and force them out of the division, or even out of the force altogether. The brother of Jim Street's 28-year-old girl friend, a fellow on the team, razzes Street regularly, blaming him for the young woman's desertion. Gamble hates Street the most, believing that Street sold him out in order to stay on the force. The moments of psychological tension in some cases outweigh the traditional car chases, explosions, and chopper escapades making "S.W.A.T." worthwhile summer entertainment.