Well, this is a surprise. The sequel to William Friedkin's and Gerald Petievich's network television film C. A. T. Squad, a largely dull affair masquerading as a thriller, is actually...pretty decent? I mean, I still wouldn't go so far as to call it good, but it's perfectly competent. Maybe it's the inclusion of Robert Ward as a writer. I mean, maybe his history of novel writing and writing for Michael Mann on Miami Vice taught him the basics of thriller mechanics. Because that's all this really is...a pretty basic thriller but without all of the "shooting fleeing suspects in the back is a good thing" part.
So, the C. A. T. Squad led by Doc (Joe Cortese) is in the middle of an operation to pursue Columbian dealers who are working as cutouts for South African buyers of nuclear weapons. Bud (Steve James) is there with Bud on the ground while Nikki (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) is working to get close to one of the higher ups in the operation, Paul Kiley (Miguel Ferrer). After the operation with the Cambodians, their Air Force resource on the squad, John (Jack Youngblood), as a member of the Air Force reserves, gets recruited to fly a secret mission for Python Squad, a secret government operation being then used to monitor extremist elements in South Africa.
Now, you see, this right here is a step up from the first film. The opening section dealing with smugglers in the US ties with the larger plot. It's not random. There are separate elements building onto each other. I think it would have helped greatly if there was a sense of mystery around any of it, though, keeping it from a complete success, but the film just kind of lays out the pieces in the first act and never deviates from it. I mean, come on, one rogue State Department official helping the South Africans get nuclear weapons who gets caught and has to fess up, or something.
Anyway, John's plane crashes, and he and his team get captured. Doc learns that he's missing, working through channels to figure out where he went, and decides that C. A. T. Squad is going to take this mission to save John on their own. Again, this is much better than what happened before where they took the law into their own hands and strategized how they were going to get around administrative regulations around the proper use of force after...shooting a suspect in the back. They are out to rescue one of their own, and violating South African airspace to get in is much less egregious than, again, shooting a suspect in the back.
The film decides to go on a more serious route with Paul figuring out Nikki's real identity and dealing with her, providing a nice bit of actual character stakes that feel less messy than Leon being a complete screwup in the previous film and then dying. It also leads to how the character stuff in general is better handled here without the need for extensive backstories. It's mostly implied with only one real scene between John and Nikki to support a lot of it, but it's just, you know, competent. It's not enough to get me to tear up or anything, but it's functional which is better than anything in the previous installment of this weird little network television movie franchise.
So, thing escalate and go towards South Africa where we get a surprisingly dour ending where just about everyone, well, it's dour, like no one wins in this fight. That's something that feels very Friedkin, one of the only things in these two films that feels like come from him.
Overall, it's much better than the first (I really didn't expect that). But, I still wouldn't say that it's actually successful. It does a lot better, but the character stuff still feels thin and perfunctory while managing to rise to the level of competent. The overall plot is, again, little more than functional without have the kinds of twists and turns that one might expect from a globe-trotting thriller. It's a deeply flawed work, but that's a real and serious step up from what came before.
