MOVIE adaptations of TV series are hit and miss affairs. The Fugitive hit the target; The Avengers was a mile wide. But does anyone actually remember SWAT on the small screen?

It was big in America, apparently, but struggled to make an impact this side of the Atlantic.

Still, its promise of high octane action and sophisticated weaponry in a land of high crime rates makes one wonder why it has taken Hollywood so long to make a film about a team of law enforcers everyone has heard of, but don't know what they actually do.

SWAT stands for Special Weapons And Tactics and is a squad of cops called in to tackle particularly tricky and potentially explosive situations.

Jim Street (Farrell) is a crack SWAT member kicked down the ladder a couple of rungs after a controversial robbery/hostage stand-off.

He gets a chance to redeem himself when new team commander Dan "Hondo" Harrelson (Jackson) is brought in to lick the team into shape.

After weeks of demanding physical training, the unit gets to prove its mettle when a notorious drugs baron is captured and offers $100m to anyone who can spring him from jail. The fun starts when they have to escort him out of Los Angeles into the custody of the FBI.

There is much chest-thumping, macho-posturing in SWAT - and that's just from the (token) female member of the team.

It's an action movie by numbers, following a tried and trusted, and utterly predictable course of big bangs, car chases and two-dimensional character confrontations that offer nothing in imagination or creativity beyond spending a few million dollars on blowing up half of a Hollywood backlot.

Farrell and Jackson have great screen presence and given a better script they could have made a fabulous partnership.

But here they present us with thinly scripted characters uttering all sorts of banal cliches, which may sound good in Hollywood cop land, but to any half intelligent cinema audience, will be the funniest thing they've heard since the Naked Gun movies.

There is a gloss to the film and it moves at a slick pace. But looking good isn't good enough - we are very much in seen-it-all before territory, with originality clearly being way down in the list of priorities.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Film writer Stephen Webb reviews SWAT

Starring: Colin Farrell, Samuel L Jackson

Director: Clark Johnson

Certificate: 12A

Running time: 117 mins

Showing at: UGC and Cineworld, Swindon