Clark Johnson Movies

For the fifth and final season of this groundbreaking urban drama, series creator David Simon returns to his old stomping grounds at the Baltimore Sun, where he worked for many years as a crime reporter, to examine the media's role in modern society. This fictionalized version of what was once a newspaper of record is experiencing tough economic times, precipitating layoffs and a hollow mantra from management to "do more with less." These marching orders are met with derision by Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson), an old-school City Desk editor who encourages eager young journalists such as Alma Gutierrez (Michelle Paress) to hone their craft. The cutbacks at the Sun mirror those at City Hall, where Mayor Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) -- who's too busy angling for a gubernatorial run and convicting corrupt politico Clay Davis (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) to care-slashes the police budget to save money. But the decimation of the department's morale and matériel is too much for Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West). The maverick detective, who is not only back in Homicide but regressing to his tomcatting ways, fabricates a grisly crime that catches the eye of self-serving Sun reporter Scott Templeton (Tom McCarthy). And although his sensational articles about a rampaging serial killer are met with skepticism by Haynes, they're championed by his prize-hungry bosses. McNulty's scheme doesn't sit well with his partner Bunk (Wendell Pierce), but is embraced by Det. Freamon (Clarke Peters) if the means justify the restoration of funding to pursue drug lord Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector). Free of law-enforcement scrutiny, Marlo shields himself with onetime Barksdale attorney Maurice Levy (Michael Kostroff) on a quest to rule the entire city's drug trade, and tempts fate by luring stickup artist Omar (Michael K. Williams) back to town to settle an old score. Meanwhile, former addict Bubbles (Andre Royo) struggles to stay clean, but finds it hard to face his demons at Narcotics Anonymous meetings. ~ Joe Friedrich, All Movie Guide

A young boy draws on the power of magic in order to unite a noble healer and a wounded warrior in Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer's poetic feature directorial debut. Jude (Karen LeBlanc) is a City Hospital nurse afflicted with sickle-cell anemia. Her twelve year old son Ciel (Daniel J. Gordon) longs for her to get well, and begins casing a series of healing spells in hopes that they will ease her suffering. Into Jude and Ciel's life stumbles Silence (Clark Johnson), an underground fighter who has just taken a pummeling. Silence was in need of stitches, and Jude was the nurse on duty at the time he was admitted. An imposing figure who's just as taciturn as his name suggests, Silence is still shaken by the recent death of his trainer - a man who was as much a father figure as he was a coach. Not only has the loss shaken Silence emotionally, but it's also forced him to take on some heavy new responsibilities. Perhaps if Ciel could bring this pair together, Silence could find the emotional support he so desperately needs, Jude could have a companion to keep her company during those dark days of illness, and a young boy will finally have a protector for himself and his ailing mother. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Debuting December 4, 2005 on the Showtime network, the weekly, hour-long drama Sleeper Cell was at base an I Led Three Lives for the post-9/11 era, albeit with a bit more depth in, and understanding of, the villainous characters. In the opening episode, a disgruntled Muslim ex-convict named Darwyn Al-Sayeed (Michal Ealy) was recruited into a terrorist sleeper cell based in Los Angeles and headed by the fanatical Faris Al-Farik (Oded Eher). In order to best follow out his plans of sabotage and destruction in the US, Al-Farik posed as a Jewish-American named Yossi, who ironically worked for a security company. Similarly, the other members of the cell held down legitimate jobs while carrying out their dirty work--and, as if to put the lie to the assumption that terrorism has but one face, the others were drawn from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. Blue-eyed, blonde-haired All-American boy Tommy Emerson (Blake Shields) was the privileged son of liberal activists; Frenchman Christian Aumont (Alex Nesic), a former Skinhead and National Front member, led an outwardly respectable life as a suburban husband and father; and Al-Farik's Bosnian right-hand man Ilija (Henri Lubatti),who had witnessed the slaughter of his family by Orthodox Serbs, hid his terrorist activites behind the façade of a high-school science teacher. What none of the cell members realized was that Darwyn Al-Sayeed was likewise a "poser": He was actually an undercover FBI agent, assigned to infiltrate Al-Farik's cell and covertly thwart his various sinister schemes against national security. Only his FBI supervisor Rayl Fuller (James Legros) was aware of Darwyn's dual identity; others, including Darwyn's single-mom sweetheart Gayle Bishop (Melissa Sagemiller), had no idea of his actual mission. In keeping with pay-cable tradition, Sleeper Cell was infinitely more profane and violent than standard over-the-air action fare. And in many ways, the series was also infinitely superior to its non-pay cable competition. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Unaware that some of the "Money Train" cash has been marked by the feds, Vic (Michael Chiklis) decides to use some of it for a sting operation to track down the stolen military weaponry. Vic and Shane (Walton Goggins) pose as white supremacists to buy the guns, but things go wrong when Garza (Guillermo Diaz) the Byz Latz gang leader who's supposed to sell them the guns, double-crosses and outflanks them, making off with their cash. The Strike Team has to scramble to get the cash back and find the weapons in order to avert a gang war, all without letting team member Tavon (Brian J. White), who wasn't in on the "Money Train" heist, find out what they're up to. Garza is also apparently involved in a murder case that Dutch (Jay Karnes) and Claudette (CCH Pounder) are investigating. It's an apparent gang hit, but the only witness, Esteban (Jeremy Ray Valdez), is a bookish young man, a friend of the victim who claims he didn't see anything. Vic tries to use Diagur (Frankie Rodriguez), Garza's number two man, to take down Garza. Claudette goes over Aceveda's (Benito Martinez) head in an effort to get her promotion. Julien (Michael Jace) and his partner, Tommy (Matt Gerald), face a charge of excessive force, and Danny (Catherine Dent) returns to work. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Clark Johnson's big-screen adaptation of the 1970s television series S.W.A.T. stars Colin Farrell as Jim Street, a young special weapons and tactics team member who, in the film's opening sequence, is demoted after his hothead partner Jeremy Renner shoots a hostage while trying to kill her captor. In need of good press, the higher-ups call in SWAT expert Hondo Harrelson (Samuel L. Jackson) to put together an elite team that can bring some luster back to the badge. He chooses Street, veteran T.J. (Josh Charles), and tough single mother Chris Sanchez (Michelle Rodriguez). The new team survives a series of tests before hitting the streets. Their first big assignment involves transporting an international criminal (Olivier Martinez) to federal authorities. The criminal had offered a hundred million dollars to anyone who can bust him out. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

As Captain David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) gives a press conference, touting impressive crime statistics and community outreach in Farmington (L.A.) under his watch, Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his Strike Team chase down a drug dealer, and Mackey impolitely exposes the perp's intimately concealed stash. Detectives Dutch Wagenbach (Jay Karnes) and Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder) discover a murdered woman whose young daughter is nowhere to be found. Captain Aceveda chews out Mackey when the insolent detective registers his fourth excessive force complaint since the captain's appointment. The captain also convinces Detective Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond) to help him uncover dirt on Mackey, including his connection to a local drug dealer. In exchange for helping Aceveda make a federal case, Crowley wants a job with the Justice Department. Looking for the missing girl, Dutch and Claudette interrogate her distraught crackhead father (the late Denis Forest). He eventually admits to murdering his wife and selling his daughter to a pedophile. They then bring in George Sawyer (Brian Boone), and Dutch manages to trick him into confessing that he bought the girl and traded her to another pedophile, Dr. Bernard Grady (Jim Ortlieb). The two detectives have little luck cracking Grady. In desperation, Aceveda has Mackey conduct his own form of interrogation. "Good cop and bad cop have gone home," Mackey tells Grady, "I'm a whole new kind of cop." Dutch is trying to get to know Officer Danny Sofer (Catherine Dent), but is repeatedly interrupted and humiliated by the married Mackey, who has already slept with her. Crowley joins the Strike Team as they execute a daring raid on a big-time dealer. The pilot for The Shield was directed by Clark Johnson, who co-starred with Diamond on Homicide: Life on the Street. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

In 1955, an African-American woman named Rosa Parks dared to take an empty seat in the "Whites Only" section on a city bus in Montomery, AL, and sparked one of the first major battles in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, thus bringing the work of Martin Luther King to the attention of many Americans for the first time. Boycott is a made-for-TV movie that dramatizes the events of the Montomery bus boycott, weaving vintage newsreel footage with scenes depicting the public and private dramas involved in the protests. Boycott stars Jeffrey Wright as Martin Luther King, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and Terrence Dashon Howard as Ralph Abernathy; CCH Pounder, Reg E. Cathey, and Shawn Michael Howard highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Some six months after the cancellation of the popular, hard-hitting TV cop series Homicide, most of the cast members were reunited for a two-hour TV movie, which deftly (and somewhat surprisingly) combines stark, raw realism with Sartre-esque flights of fantasy. Several members past and present of the Baltimore Police Department's homicide squad are brought back together when their former skipper and current mayoral candidate, Al "G" Giardelli (Yaphet Kotto), is gunned down by a would-be assassin. As former partners Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) conduct their own personal search for the perpetrator, the comatose "G" discovers that not all police review boards are conducted by the living. Like its weekly predecessor, Homicide: The Movie was co-produced by Baltimore native Barry Levinson. The film made its first NBC network TV appearance on February 13, 2000. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the early '90s, someone broke into a suburban Washington, D.C., home and shot and killed a woman and a nurse at close range, and then disconnected the woman's handicapped son's breathing tube. The grim tragedy became headlines when the divorced father, music industry insider Lawrence Horn (James McDaniel), now living in Hollywood, was accused of hiring a Detroit hit man James Perry (Clark Johnson) to do the job. First Amendment/free speech scholar Rod Smolla (Timothy Hutton) is brought into the case not to help convict Horn and Perry, but to find the publisher of the book Hit Man, which was used as a blueprint for the crimes, guilty of aiding and abetting. No publisher had ever been convicted of a similar crime. ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide

Ron Eldard guest stars as Emmett Carey, who takes his two children hostage, barricades himself in his sister-in-law's apartment, and threatens to blow up the place if the cops try to remove him. As the day wears on, Mike Giardello (Giancarlo Esposito) and Stuart Gharty (Peter Gerety) are able to gain Carey's confidence, and hope to use this advantage to talk him out of doing something he'll regret. But all bets are off when Carey's ex-wife manages to break through the police barricade -- and is shot dead for her troubles. This devastatingly dramatic episode was originally scheduled to air on April 30, 1999. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) is fed up with the liberties taken by the homicide squad's FBI liaison -- never mind that his own son Mike (Giancarlo Esposito) is himself an FBI agent. Elsewhere, the detectives resent the preferential treatment afforded ADA Eleanor Burke (Haviland Morris), who intends to use Battered Spouse Syndrome to defend herself against charges of murdering her husband. Ballard (Callie Thorne) shames Lewis (Clark Johnson) into teaming with her to solve a barroom stabbing. And waitress Billie Lou (Ellen McElduff) receives an unexpected -- and very inebriated -- wedding proposal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

All her life, Josephine Pitt (Brooke Smith) has been told that she was responsible for the death of her brother in 1972, when she was only three years old. Now she wants to know for certain -- and to do that, she appeals to Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), who handled the original case. Meanwhile, Bayliss (Kyle Secor) and Ballard (Callie Thorne) investigate the case of a junkie who was shot after dying of a drug overdose. Both detectives are weighed down by their personal travails -- especially Bayliss, who is tired of being ridiculed for his sexual preferences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide