Movie review - Bring the Law

Bring the Law **1/2 (out of 5) Guess what, kids? Mickey Rourke found yet another gig playing an evil crime boss who doesn’t have to put in much screen time, physical action or dialog to fulfill his contractual obligation of establishing how daunting it will be for the good guys to prevail. The good news for Rourke fans is that he looks less waxy than he has in his last few roles.

Rourke and his minions control a section of a northern California city with a full menu of felonious enterprises. Extortion, drug dealing, sex trafficking, bribery and corruption reaching up to the highest levels of government and finance. They appear unstoppable due to a combination of brute force against the locals, and lack of will by the cops.

One honcho in law enforcement (Peter Facinelli) assigns a tough, out-of-favor detective from nearby Oakland (Brendan Fehr) to take over the squad responsible for that turf to make them, shall we say, more proactive. It’s a move akin to sending one Texas Ranger for one riot. Fehr wades into the challenge like every gunfighter who was hired by a victimized town in the Old West to clean it up. Wyatt Urban? Not as extreme as Dirty Harry; more like Moderately Smudged Harry.

Fehr soon realizes there must be a mole lurking in his little posse, since Rourke always manages to know more than he oughtta, sooner than he shouldda. As the plot plays out, there’s a whole lotta rotten smelling up this little “state of Denmark” (that’s just a Hamlet reference; nothing to do with the current Greenland kerfuffle). Knowing further details would dim one’s enjoyment of the proceedings.

Fehr does well at establishing the low-key toughness, integrity and determination his role requires. Yet the most noteworthy component is the feature-length directing debut for popular actress Scout Taylor-Compton, who was prominent as a kick-ass cheerleading captain in 2025’s solid action flick, Speed Train. She really shines here at maintaining a balance between the needed exposition and character development and the action. Those sequences are exciting and gritty. She also eschews the trend towards excessive cutting, and provides enough lighting to display the mayhem, rather than obscure it, avoiding a couple of items on my growing list of pet peeves. Presumably, credit for that is shared with editor Austin Nordell and stunt coordinator Tom O’Connell. Kudos, troops!

Though her 10 awards and nominations have been for acting, I must not be the only one impressed by Taylor-Compton’s directing. Her IMDb page shows four more of those gigs in various stages of production; that goes with a batch of acting jobs – including double duty in one of them. That’s a lot of achievement for one still in her late thirties. It’s likely that the best is yet to come.

(Bring the Law opens in theaters and is available On Demand as of 2/27/26)