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The original video cover for Raw Justice, which was also released under the monicker “Good Cop, Bad Cop”, featured a picture of a scantily clad Pamela Anderson on her knees sporting an impressive cleavage. Using that “unique selling point” it’s pretty obvious that this movie’s strength doesn’t lie in it’s intricate plot, powerhouse acting and characters with depth. The little strength this movie has, if it has any, is merely provided by the nude scenes of the female characters. In fact, I saw this movie somewhere around 1995 and the only thing I remembered about this movie was that there a seedy sex scene in an alley where Pamela went fully nude. So how about the rest of this movie?
Raw Justice is about a guy (Robert Hays) who’s being framed for a murder on the mayor’s daughter. A bounty hunter (David Keith) tracks him down but believes he’s innocent. Since the guys who’re actually behind the murder try to kill them while they’re in the presence of prostitute Pamela Anderson she goes on the run with them. What follows are chases, shoot-outs and boobs. And because this movie is so sleazy I thought I’d honor it by posting almost nothing but nude scenes from the movie!
Raw Justice was made just before the height of Pamela’s career, before she starred in Barb Wire which plummeted her off everybody’s list in an instance. Despite being billed third and not appearing until half-hour in the movie other than parading around in her underwear in the opening scene, she’s used as the main selling point. Not surprising as the rest of the movie is basically nothing short of terrible. Sadly it never reaches the so-bad-it’s-good territory, though some scenes are rather hilarious for all the wrong reasons; the (in)famous alley scene occurs when they are hiding from a small army of armed bad guys. What better time to have sex eh? During a car chase there just so happens to be a truck standing in the middle of the street with a ramp placed against the trailer for no good reason other than creating a scene where a car bursts through the trailer; goofy stuff!
Why would anyone park that way at an intersection?
The script is terrible and lacks any excitement or originality. The main leads were flat but since they’re played by weak actors I don’t feel sorry for them. Sadly, veteran actors like Charles Napier and Stacy Keach also appear in this movie and both of them don’t get material worthy of their talent. Stacy Keach’s plan for him to become mayor is just filled with stupidity and nothing a man of his supposed stature should think of and then thinks he can get away with it.
I wonder if they make movies like this anymore, because this movie targets a very specific audience: teenage boys. This was released in 1993 and in 1993 there was no internet. When you were a teenager then all you had were either dad’s hidden porn movies or when he didn’t have any, movies like this: movies that have gratuitous nudity, steamy sex scenes and just enough plot wrapped around it to justify this movie as being labeled as a generic action thriller and not a soft porno. Nobody would suspect anything when you rented it one rainy and horny sunday afternoon.
But let’s face it: the mayor’s daughter, who has the body of a playboy model, gets home, goes into the shower and shows full frontal nudity before getting strangled. Pamela Anderson constantly runs around in a top and a pair of daisy dukes. She has two steamy sex scenes which display all her assets. They have no real function to the plot other than to give the male audience what it came for: Tits and ass.
It’s not really surprising these movies have little more function than that. Why else would producers cast Playboy-models who can’t act in pivotal roles? Pamela Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith and Erika Eleniak have all headlined in movies which were enriched with unnecessary, extensive scenes that required them to take their clothes off. And when you’re a teen boy in 1993 you didn’t care, but nowadays you could just as well download the now vintage home porn movie with her then-husband Tommy Lee. You’ll see more flesh and a better story.
