The Mod Squad

Directed by Scott Silver, The Mod Squad follows three criminals-turned-cops (Claire Danes’s Julie, Giovanni Ribisi’s Pete, and Omar Epps’ Linc) as they attempt to solve their captain’s murder. It’s a reasonable-enough premise that’s employed to mostly underwhelming and uninvolving effect by Silver, as the filmmaker, armed with a screenplay written alongside Stephen Kay and Kate Lanier, delivers a frenetic and visually unappealing misfire that does, for the most part, remain unable to capture the viewer’s interest and attention – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by the three leads’ oddly uncharismatic and perpetually grating efforts (ie their characters are, to varying degrees, just unpleasant people). And although Silver has admittedly peppered the proceedings with a small handful of compelling sequences (eg the protagonists attempt to clear their names), The Mod Squad builds towards a fairly tedious third act that’s capped off with an action-heavy yet entirely anticlimactic finale – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as a misguided adaptation that (admittedly) never becomes quite as interminable as one might’ve feared.

** out of ****