Movie Review : ‘Renegades’ a Waste of Sutherland, Phillips

“Renegades” (citywide), a shamelessly contrived, ultraviolent macho fantasy, stars Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips, who are too talented and too successful to be wasting themselves on such trash.

Sutherland plays a maverick undercover Philadelphia cop who has infiltrated a ring of jewel thieves. For absolutely no discernible reason except to further the plot, its icily lethal ringleader (Rob Knepper), while making his escape, steals a lance sacred to the Lakota Sioux on display as part of a gallery exhibition of Lakota arts and crafts. This allows Phillips, a tribe member, to team up (warily) with Sutherland in his pursuit of the bad guys.

David Rich’s script provides for maximum bloodshed and destruction of property and minimal common sense. Director Jack Sholder can at least be credited for maintaining a high level of energy in deploying the film’s rampant foolishness, which includes Sutherland’s miraculously rapid recovery from a gunshot wound to his abdomen.

It’s a real shame that Gary Farmer, the hilarious co-star of “Powwow Highway,” is gunned down early on, because his massively humorous and sweet-natured presence would have been a welcome comic relief.

As it is, the only laughs that occur in “Renegades” (rated R for extreme violence) are in its final scene, when Phillips, not once but twice, mispronounces “cavalry” as “calvary.”