What a cool, once in a lifetime duo pairing, of two great box office stars, in a refreshing CE actioner, which stands alone. Though the story is a bit of a bummer, as to it's car theft premise, it's a more professional execution of car theft story, which makes for a smarter. Polished one. The two team baddies, Julia and Braga are wonderful, Julia, splendid as two bad asses you don't want to cross, who run a powerful and successful operation. Julia is the object figure of Eastwood's obsessive vengeance, with his partner set up, and killed. Enter new rookie cop, Sheen who's really good here, partnered with Eastwood's Nick Pulovski, and of course (cliche alert) Clint's not happy about it, but soon accepts the situation. We have a nice knuckle wrestle grap between the two, Clint's eye, twitching afterwards, and some nice bar room brawling, and car stunt action. Sheen is really fun in this and like his character in Fixing The Shadow, he's forced to contront his past, which has been eating him up alive. A familiar Scarface face, is fun to watch as their police captain. Braga is one of the best female nasties in a long time, where, Clint's forced to endure a bitter sweet raping. All in all, The Rookie rises above the normal actioners, placing it as a fine action drama, and in no way a bad movie, which ulimately delivers.
