Beyond the Law (1993)

A 1993 crime film about a cop who goes undercover in a biker gang, and who finds out what being undercover costs. The film is honest about the cost, and the honesty is the part most 90s undercover-cop films were not willing to pay.

What the film does

Charlie Sheen plays Dan Saxon, a cop with a troubled past who is sent to infiltrate a biker gang suspected of being involved in drug running and murder. The film is interested in the infiltration as a long process, not as a one-scene gambit. The film is interested in the weeks and months of the undercover work, in the work of being someone you are not, and in what the work does to a person over weeks and months.

Linda Fiorentino plays the love interest, the leader’s old lady, who is not the cliché the genre usually pretends. The love interest is allowed to be a real character, with her own reasons for being in the gang and her own reasons for not being in the gang, and the reasons are not the reasons the genre usually gives. Michael Madsen plays the gang leader, and the gang leader is allowed to be a real character too, allowed to be smarter than the genre’s usual gang leader, allowed to be the kind of dangerous that the genre usually skips over in favor of the showy kind of dangerous.

The third act is the break, and the break is real. The audience knows the break is coming. The break is the moment the cop stops being able to keep the two lives separate, the moment the gang starts to notice the cop is not what the cop says he is. The third act is the place the film is heading, and the third act is the place the film delivers.

Why it’s in the canon

Criteria blend is 1+3, loved it and want to remember it. A 90s crime film that takes the undercover-cop premise seriously. The film is not interested in the showy moments the genre usually picks. The film is interested in the work, in the slow part, in the part that does not look good on a poster. The work is the part the canon is for.

The film is also a Charlie Sheen film. The film is not the most ambitious Sheen film. The film is a Sheen film that lets Sheen be the Sheen of the era, which is to say the Sheen of the era is good, and the Sheen of the era is the version of Sheen the canon wants. The film is also a Fiorentino film, and the Fiorentino of the era is good, and the canon is for the films where the era’s people are good.

A note on the year

The film is 1993. The Letterboxd page is the 1993 film. The Wikipedia URL uses 1993 in the slug. We use 1993.

A note on disambiguation

This is the 1993 Larry Ferguson film starring Charlie Sheen. There is no other feature film of this title in the same year. The 2019 S. Craig Zahler film Bone Tomahawk is unrelated and is not a beyond-the-law film.

A note on the image

Letterboxd has only a portrait poster for this film. The hero image is a 16:9 still from the film, sourced via Yandex images search. The still is a biker-gang scene with the undercover character in the foreground. The image source is a screenshot archive (kinoafisha.info) that catalogs frame captures of films.

On hand

Yes, DVD + digital. The DVD is the Tri-Star release. The digital copy is the same transfer, no extras.