Above the Law

As in his previous film, Davis gets mileage out of supporting players who do not look or sound like professional actors and so add a level of realism to the action.

The movie has the same problem as Davis' Chuck Norris vehicle, Code of Silence. Starting in the semi-realistic framework of the '70s cop movies, it veers off into '80s action movie cloud-cuckoo land: the paranoid one-against-a-hundred cliches of the average Schwarzenegger-Stallone heavy-pectoral snow job. [08 Apr 1988, p.14]

The action sequences are sleek and strong enough, but the story that chains them together is too ambitious for its own good

A slam-bang action film with some stunning scenes of mayhem and violence.

Davis' direction is Miami Vice-tight, though with frequent attempts at humour: this, together with the caricature psycho-baddie (Silva), and the mixture of spectacular, bone-crunchingly realistic violence with a stab at topical socio-political commentary, makes for a very uncertain tone.

Come the end of the year, Above the Law may well rank among the top three or four goofiest bad movies of 1988.

Above The Law is beneath contempt, a movie whose esthetic politics stand somewhere to the right of tyrannosaurus rex. You know the type. Take your standard-issue Vietnam vet, martial-arts-mastering, renegade cop and turn him loose on the mean streets of any photogenic city (Chicago and its El, in this neon-and-sleaze case). [26 Apr 1988]