Renegades is set in Philadelphia where detective Buster McHenry (Kiefer Sutherland) is working undercover to try & bring down a dirty cop by arranging a robbery to steal six million dollars worth of diamonds, however things don't go to plan & the dirty cop doesn't show up & instead McHenry is forced to go through with the armed robbery with local mobster Marino (Robert Knepper) & his men. Things go from bad to worse for McHenry as bullets start to fly & people are shot & killed, the cops show up & all hell breaks loose & Marino, his men & McHenry try to escape en-route stopping off at an art gallery where Marino takes a fancy to an ancient Indian tribal lance on display & decides to steal it shooting Goerge Storm (Gary Farmer) in the process. His brother Hank Storm (Lou Diamond Phillips) is understandably annoyed & when he saves McHenry's life as Marino shoots him & leaves him for dead the two team up to bring Marino down, prove McHenry's innocence & get the Indian tribal lance back...
Directed by Jack Sholder one has to say that Renegades is a really lacklustre & lifeless attempt at mismatched partners teaming up together to bring down some bad guy action thriller & is in fact maybe one of the worst examples I have seen. There are plenty of great examples of this type of mismatched partner action thrillers from 48 Hrs. (1982) to Lethal Weapon (1987) & it's sequels to Midnight Run (1988) to Tango & Cash (1989) to The Last Boy Scout (1991) to the more recent Rush Hour (1998) & sequels to name but a few fine examples, unfortunately when compared to shining lights of the sub genre like the aforementioned Renegades is just plain poor in every department by comparison. The main aspect of these types of films that ultimately make or breaks them is the partnership, here it's a quick talking wise cracking Philadelphia cop with a blatant disregard for police procedure who gets teamed up with a quiet respectful native American Indian & it just doesn't come off since there's virtually no humour or memorable interplay between the two. I just never warmed to either of them although to be fair Sutherland does try & his character does come off as the more likable of the two. The plot is extremely bare-bones & very thin, basically there's this robbery where events take a turn for the worse for our two main character's & it becomes personal for them so they team up to bring down a common enemy. That's it. There's a supposed plot twist about a bad cop but it comes to early in the film & has no real impact on the story other than a cop is involved with the main bad guy. The action scenes are poor & very forgettable, there's a dull car chase & a few seen it all before shoot-outs where the bad guys can't shoot straight, no-one ever runs out of bullets & it's just a case of men standing there holding guns firing at each other. Yawn. The plot is extremely predictable & strictly by the numbers with these two mismatched partners hating each other to start with but growing to respect each other & becoming great friends & even putting their own lives at risk for one another, seen it all before & usually done much better with more humour & more excitement. I also hated the ending, I mean after killing people, stealing cars, threatening people at gunpoint, taking part in an armed robbery where innocent people are killed & breaking every rule in the book McHenry gets off scott free & even gets a vacation out of it!
The action scenes, if you can call them that, are poor with only a fairly sedate car chase to remember the film by & even that seems lethargic, slow & dull. The occasional shoot-out are dull & all look the same as each other, the plot twists are handled poorly & have little to no impact & Renegades is one of the worst examples of the mismatched partner action thriller genre I can remember seeing. For an 80's big studio big budget action thriller Renegades doesn't seem to be that well known, there are only sixteen reviews on the IMDb as I write this & only three external reviews. I can certainly understand why it's been largely forgotten about & why it doesn't seem to have any sort of a following.
Making less than $10,000,000 at the box office I assume that Renegades was a flop, the same years Tango & Cash is a much superior film using the same general template. Filmed in Philadelphia & Ontario in Canada. Kiefer Sutherland looks fat, out of shape & has a really bad moustache but managed to live this down & has gone on to have a fine career as a respected actor while Lou Diamond Phillips has made dozens of low budget straight to video action films.
Renegades is a really predicable, humourless, dull & plodding action thriller that throws two mismatched yet boring characters together to bring down an equally boring enemy. One to avoid, even newly converted fans of Kiefer Sutherland (beacuse of hit TV show 24) might want to skip this.
Directed by Jack Sholder one has to say that Renegades is a really lacklustre & lifeless attempt at mismatched partners teaming up together to bring down some bad guy action thriller & is in fact maybe one of the worst examples I have seen. There are plenty of great examples of this type of mismatched partner action thrillers from 48 Hrs. (1982) to Lethal Weapon (1987) & it's sequels to Midnight Run (1988) to Tango & Cash (1989) to The Last Boy Scout (1991) to the more recent Rush Hour (1998) & sequels to name but a few fine examples, unfortunately when compared to shining lights of the sub genre like the aforementioned Renegades is just plain poor in every department by comparison. The main aspect of these types of films that ultimately make or breaks them is the partnership, here it's a quick talking wise cracking Philadelphia cop with a blatant disregard for police procedure who gets teamed up with a quiet respectful native American Indian & it just doesn't come off since there's virtually no humour or memorable interplay between the two. I just never warmed to either of them although to be fair Sutherland does try & his character does come off as the more likable of the two. The plot is extremely bare-bones & very thin, basically there's this robbery where events take a turn for the worse for our two main character's & it becomes personal for them so they team up to bring down a common enemy. That's it. There's a supposed plot twist about a bad cop but it comes to early in the film & has no real impact on the story other than a cop is involved with the main bad guy. The action scenes are poor & very forgettable, there's a dull car chase & a few seen it all before shoot-outs where the bad guys can't shoot straight, no-one ever runs out of bullets & it's just a case of men standing there holding guns firing at each other. Yawn. The plot is extremely predictable & strictly by the numbers with these two mismatched partners hating each other to start with but growing to respect each other & becoming great friends & even putting their own lives at risk for one another, seen it all before & usually done much better with more humour & more excitement. I also hated the ending, I mean after killing people, stealing cars, threatening people at gunpoint, taking part in an armed robbery where innocent people are killed & breaking every rule in the book McHenry gets off scott free & even gets a vacation out of it!
The action scenes, if you can call them that, are poor with only a fairly sedate car chase to remember the film by & even that seems lethargic, slow & dull. The occasional shoot-out are dull & all look the same as each other, the plot twists are handled poorly & have little to no impact & Renegades is one of the worst examples of the mismatched partner action thriller genre I can remember seeing. For an 80's big studio big budget action thriller Renegades doesn't seem to be that well known, there are only sixteen reviews on the IMDb as I write this & only three external reviews. I can certainly understand why it's been largely forgotten about & why it doesn't seem to have any sort of a following.
Making less than $10,000,000 at the box office I assume that Renegades was a flop, the same years Tango & Cash is a much superior film using the same general template. Filmed in Philadelphia & Ontario in Canada. Kiefer Sutherland looks fat, out of shape & has a really bad moustache but managed to live this down & has gone on to have a fine career as a respected actor while Lou Diamond Phillips has made dozens of low budget straight to video action films.
Renegades is a really predicable, humourless, dull & plodding action thriller that throws two mismatched yet boring characters together to bring down an equally boring enemy. One to avoid, even newly converted fans of Kiefer Sutherland (beacuse of hit TV show 24) might want to skip this.