Product Review

In Family of Cops III, Charles Bronson plays the aging, paunchy patriarch of a... well... family of cops. The point of this series seems to be the contrast between the family's hard-as-nails attitude toward crime and their warm, loving treatment of each other, but the writing is so cliché-ridden, and the acting so dominated by smug, ham-fisted machismo, that the most mediocre episode of NYPD Blue or Homicide: Life on the Street must be 10 times more compelling than this. There's a main story line about a murder within a prestigious banking family and a subplot about a young buck who feels responsible for the death of a fellow cop. There isn't a shred of intelligence, originality, or suspense in this entire movie. Does Bronson really have enough of a following to warrant making three of these? --Bret Fetzer