Ranking of 1980s cop films by number of law violations

Incredibly unpleasant film Clint Eastwood-directional Sudden Impact begins with the gang rape of a woman (played by Eastwood’s real-life love interest, Sondra Locke), and only gets worse from there. To honor(?), Sudden Impact struggles to come to terms with the contradiction between Callahan’s extreme methods and the fact that he gets results. But given the heinousness of the main crime, Sudden Impact remains completely on Callahan’s side, convinced that the law must be broken to stop the extreme cases.

5. Code of Silence (1985)

As we’ll soon see, director Andrew Davies has made a name for himself by delivering excellent performances as action heroes with zero charisma. IN Code of Silencehe does this trick with Chuck Norrisa man whose martial arts abilities impressed Bruce Lee, but whose acting skills impressed no one. Davis gets a lot of help in Code of Silence filling the film with a great supporting cast including Dennis Farina, Henry Silva and Ron Dean.

But while the ensemble cast helps distribute painful responsibility, it also makes Chicago PD look very, very corrupt. Which, to its credit, is kind of the point Code of Silence. Written by Michael Butler, Dennis Shryack and Mike Gray. Code of Silence is about a gang war in Chicago that breaks out after a corrupt cop kills an innocent man. The resulting turmoil forces officers to decide whether they support the law or the badge, and while Norris’ Eddie Cusack is fighting for the former, many others are not.

4. Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

“He’s just been recalled,” quips Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) before he kills corrupt South African official Arjen Rudd (Joss Eklund), who has just invoked diplomatic immunity. It is difficult to understand how an aging sergeant has the right to revoke the immunity of any diplomat, even if that diplomat is an African extolling the virtues of apartheid South Africa, and the sergeant is black. But then Murtaugh and his partner Riggs (Mel Gibson) have already committed their fair share of questionable activities in the first Lethal Weapon since 1987, director Richard Donner.

Donner returns to continuationbut while original screenwriter Shane Black has story credit along with Warren Murphy, Jeffrey Boam gets sole screenplay credit on this sequel. This string of names makes it hard to figure out who exactly deserves the blame for pushing Murtaugh over the edge instead of getting him to keep Riggs under control. When Murtaugh is too old to be intelligent, Lethal Weapon falls out of commission, and both cops take all sorts of illegal actions to destroy their reprehensible victim in a third-act carnage.

3. Above the Law (1988)

If they don’t think about his embarrassing line of direct-to-video action films or his support for dictators like Vladimir Putin, anyone who hears the name Steven Seagal thinks about the 1992s Under siege. And for good reason. Seagal may be the world’s least compelling action star, but Under siege rules, thanks to a real star Tommy Lee Jones and director Andrew Davies. To Under siegeDavis previously got a solid performance from Seagal with Above the law.