| Extreme Justice | |
| Director: | Mark L. Lester |
| Producer: | Frank Sacks |
| Starring: | Lou Diamond Phillips Scott Glenn Chelsea Field Yaphet Kotto Andrew Divoff Richard Grove William Lucking Ed Lauter |
| Music: | David Michael Frank |
| Cinematography: | Mark Irwin |
| Editing: | Donn Aron |
| Distributor: | Trimark Pictures |
| Runtime: | 96 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $8 million |
Extreme Justice is a 1993 American crime action thriller film directed by Mark L. Lester and starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Scott Glenn, and Chelsea Field. Originally intended to be released theatrically in April 1993, Trimark Pictures cancelled its release due to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and shifted the film to air on HBO on June 26, 1993; the film was first theatrically released in the Philippines on May 5, 1993.[1]
After an incident where he used questionable police tactics, Jeff Powers (Lou Diamond Phillips) is placed on probation. Upon hearing of his probation, a friend from the force later invites Jeff to join the Special Investigation Section, an elite and highly secretive Los Angeles Police Department(LAPD) unit designed to track and shut down high-profile criminals. Jeff discovers that the group is actually a group of rogue cops who actually function like an unofficially sanctioned death squad, and are given wide latitude in dealing with criminals. Although their official mission is to survey criminals and arrest them in the act of committing a crime, the squad often resorts to brutality and murder to dispatch the subjects they are supposed to arrest.
Jeff questions the purpose of the squad and begins to see them as more of a harm to society than a positive force for justice. When he tries to bring evidence of the squad's abuse of power, he learns that the squad is protected by well-connected and very influential people who already know and condone the squad's methods. Jeff's former teammates in the squad begin to suspect that Jeff has turned on them and decide to take measures to eliminate him before he can expose their activities to the public.
Lester said the film was based on real incidents saying the police "would wait around until after a crime had been committed, and wouldn't arrest people til later. My favorite scene is where someone is being raped and they're just waiting in the car until the rape's over, then they move in. That's what they would do: let the criminals rob the bank, then kill them as they left." Lester said he made the film with deliberately ambiguous leads "so some people can watch it and say 'they're doing a really good thing' while others can say 'they're really not.'"[2]