"Deadly Force" is a thoroughly routine B cop movie from the 1980s, with thoroughly routine characters. This starts with our hero, Stoney Cooper (Wings Hauser), your standard-issue maverick cop character who has issues with such things as authority and procedures. Living in NYC, he returns to LA to help an old friend (Al Ruscio, "The Godfather Part III") when the latters' granddaughter is the latest victim of a serial killer. Upon his return to the City of Angels, he tries to start over with his fed-up estranged wife (Joyce Ingalls, "Paradise Alley"), and is hassled by his former commanding officer (Lincoln Kilpatrick, "The Omega Man").

One gets no points for connecting the dots in this patently predictable storyline. But, as cliched and unoriginal as this feature is, it entertains in basically adequate fashion. Even lacking style, its action sequences are basically decent enough; the director is Paul Aaron, who'd previously directed Chuck Norris in "A Force of One". (He must have liked titles using the word "force".) The supporting cast is fine - deep-voiced Paul Shenar is cast as a unsubtly menacing motivational speaker - but what really makes the difference is Wings. He'd been such a memorable villain in "Vice Squad" a year previous, and got boosted to star status here. He's not the ultra-macho mass of muscle one often sees in action movies, but he does have an amusing personality and the same kind of tenacity that served him so well when he played "Ramrod".

Familiar actors such as Ned Eisenberg ("The Burning") and Paul Benjamin ("Escape from Alcatraz") have small roles; 'Golden Girls' fans will have the delight of seeing Estelle Getty in a brief role near the beginning of "Deadly Force" as a live-wire cabbie.

The screenplay is credited to Ken Barnett, Robert Vincent O'Neil, and Barry Schneider; Sandy Howard was the producer. O'Neil and Howard were also veterans of "Vice Squad", so "Deadly Force" was a reunion of them and Hauser. The combination of talents here doesn't yield the same incendiary results, but if you adore 80s B cop flicks, you can definitely do worse than this one.

Five out of 10.