Seguridad Nacional

why is it martin lawrance always has to do black and white jokes in all of his films? brother this and brother that. frankly, im getting sick of it. also why isnt steve zahn on the cover of the dvd? finally i think steve is an under-rated actor. he rocks!

I thought the movie started off very good with a serious tone of intrigue and suspense. That's what attracted me to watch it while channel surfing.

Although it's the first film I've seen with Steve Zahn, I thought he was genuine in his portrayal of emotion over the death of his fellow officer. His loyalty and respect for his friend and partner showed in every aspect of his acting.

Enter Martin Lawrence . . . then it became too silly.

As for, Bill Duke and Eric Roberts, they're always great in my opinion. Seasoned and mature actors.

I just can't take Martin Lawrence seriously. He's a funny comedian, but this type of silly slapstick takes away from the suspense of the film. The whole "bee" story, police academy farce, as well as the girl with the handcuffs, along with a few more so-called "funny" scenes, should have been re-written to better fit the plot. It's cute for situation comedy, but not for a movie that starts on such a serious tone. It's misleading and kills the suspense.

The movie would have been much better without it.

I usually don't like Martin Lawrence and I find his anti-white humor to be quite offensive as well as his string of bad movies. But compared to his other movie of 2003 (that would be the shockingly awful Bad Boys II), National Security is a rather easy-going and light-hearted cop comedy flick with quite a few good laughs. A lot of them, surprisingly, coming from Lawrence himself.

Hank Rafferty (Steve Zahn)is a cop who is unfairly thrown in jail for apparently beating a black suspect (Lawrence) who just got kicked out of Police Academy. With his career in tatters he emerges from the slammer with only one job opportunity available; a lowly guard for a lowly security company. Determined to follow up on the big case he was involved with before serving time, he crosses the path of fellow security guard Earl Montgomery (Lawrence again) and the two reignite their old conflict.

The old love/hate buddy thing may be old and the plot may be silly but it's a great excuse for loads of action set-pieces and humor. The potentially dangerous comedy of black vs white never becomes offensive and is handled with such lightness that it never becomes an issue. Both men have their failings and bonuses and are as equal as each other. You really do feel a great partnership between them despite their arguing and fights.

Give National Security a try. It's slick and fast-moving and is a helluva lot better than Bad Boys II. You'll probably be surprised at how funny Martin Lawrence is. I was.

The DVD is in great looking 1.85:1 widescreen with pretty good Dolby 5.1 sound. The scenes where Lawrence uses his automatic pistol really pack a heavy punch in the .1 LFE channel. The usual deleted scenes and commentary are included on the DVD but I was surprised the extended ending wasn't included in the film. It would have been better with it.

The film features two guys who are security guards teaming up to stop something foul, so it is sort of different I guess; however, the John Candy and Eugene Levy security guard duo movie is superior. I do like Steve Zahn and he makes this film a lot better than it has any right to be; yet, from a lot of posters and such, you would think he is a secondary character at best to Martin Lawrence who is front and center of all the promotional stuff for this film. Seems a bit unfair, considering the movie does actually center on Zahn's character more than Lawrence, who is funny in this, don't get me wrong, he just seems to be the second guy in this film.

The story in this one, Earl, played by Zahn and his partner are police and they end up in a very dangerous setting where Earl's partner is killed. Earl catches Lawrence's character after getting the boot from the police academy trying to reach in his car because he locked the keys in. Due to each other's situation at the moment, their meeting gets blown out of proportion and Earl ends up fired and imprisoned for beating Martin Lawrence, though in reality it was a bee sting that got Lawrence! Soon, Earl is out of prison and using any connection he can to try and find his partner's killer and soon he and Lawrence are reunited and find themselves in a plot involving some space aged metal!

As I said, Steve Zahn carries the film with Lawrence adding a bit of humorous touches here and there. I think they went overboard in how they got Earl terminated from his job, but I was glad everything worked out a bit in the end. Martin at times can be a bit much, so I am glad the focus is on Zahn as you almost want to tell Martin to settle down a bit with the ranting.

So, the film had its moments and was a bit funny. The action was pretty good in it too and probably overlooked as everyone is thinking this is strictly a comedy. One of those films my wife picked for movie night that was not too bad to watch; however, the film is not anything I would like to see again either unless it just happened to be on for some background noise. Wish Steve Zahn was in more stuff, because I always find him very funny as an actor; of course, these days you do not see much of him or Lawrence in films.

This movie could have worked if Martin Lawrence wasn't so goofy and over the top. He was just flat out annoying in this movie. Maybe the writing was so poor that this is the only way for him to play the character, or maybe he had too much artistic license and the director was too sheepish to keep him in line. Whatever the case, the movie isn't a total loss, but you know you have a bomb on your hands when your two year old likes this seemingly adult-oriented movie more than his father did.