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.

OUT! rating: 4 out of 10

l INTERMISSION (18, 105mins) Starring Colin Farrell, Kelly MacDonald. Now showing at UGC, Swindon

IT'S been a good year for fans of the Irish actor Colin Farrell. Daredevil, The Recruit and Phone Booth have kept the former Ballykissangel star very much in the public eye in 2003.

And now you can enjoy two Farrell films in one week.

As well as SWAT, the star also appears in Intermission, another crime story but this time placing Farrell on the wrong side of the law.

He plays a touch crook planning his next heist, tracked by an equally tough cop, played by Colm Meaney.

But this is only part of a convoluted saga of relationships, which sees Cillian Murphy break up with his girlfriend MacDonald, only for her to go off with a married man.

His wife, meanwhile, starts seeing Murphy's best friend in a bid to ease his heartache.

This is an intriguing Irish-set drama with an agreeable vein of black humour running throughout.

OUT! rating: 7 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