San Francisco obviously has a real problem with its police force. Not only have they had to deal with Bullitt, Dirty Harry and Michael Douglas, but now they're stuck with Christian Slater. As a caption explains, the city employs Patrol Specials, privatised security services who fill in for grown-up cops and operate through public subscription kind of like a legal protection racket.
George Kuffs (Slater), who is first seen boogieing under the credits with his newly-impregnated bimbette (Jovovich), inherits a Patrol Special division when his brother is killed, and decides to take over the family business, even though he's a 21-year-old foul-up everyone hates, just so he can do what a movie hero's gotta do and get the swine in the ugly T-shirt who was seen holding a smoking gun and giggling over big brother's corpse but who the real police still don't bother to charge with anything, even though they've got a pretty strong case for littering in church because he threw away a murder weapon.
A star vehicle for Slater, this is yet another "probably not" to the question "Will he ever do anything as good as Heathers again?" In a feeble attempt to make him look good, Slater is surrounded by incredibly uncharismatic supporting players, like Tony Goldwyn, the guy you've forgotten from Ghost, and Milla Jovovich, the girl you wish you'd forgotten was in Return To The Blue Lagoon. The movie shows how deeply it's in trouble by using all manner of tricks and gags - talking to the audience, pantomime sound effects, weird camera angles, a bloody irritating Harold Faltermeyer score, a farting police dog, villains with funny beards - to paper over gaping cracks in the plot.