Steven Seagal Month, Week Four: Out for Justice

Month one of Steven Seagal Month is finally drawing to a close. That makes sense to me, anyway. Today, we see the last film of Seagal's rise to fame, Out for Justice. Following the successes of Above the Law, Hard to Kill and...ugh...Marked for Death, Seagal was primed for another hit. But did he find it? Let's take a look at Out for Justice and find out.

This time around Seagal is Brooklyn cop Gino Felino. Don't worry, I'll wait while you get the giggles out of your system. I know Seagal likes to have weird names in his movies, but what the hell is that? Gino Felino? That's begging to be laughed at. If I was him, I might pull a Fellini and just drop the first name altogether. As our movie opens, Gino is staking out a multi-million dollar drug deal with his partner Bobby, but things go to shit when Gino spots a pimp beating a woman nearby and just can't let it go long enough to finish the sting. Gino's fellow officers pour down from the rooftops to help him make the bust, thus blowing ALL THEIR COVERS. You could stand to lose one cop, why lose all of them? For one pimp! Even when the bastard is covered in cops, Gino still feels the need to challenge the pimp to a fight, which lasts about ten seconds, with Gino ultimately slamming his foe through a windshield, resulting in one badass opening credit, as Seagal is framed in the shattered glass for a freeze frame with his name on screen. Very nice.

Shortly thereafter, as with many a Seagal film, it's time to ditch that partner, as Bobby is gunned down in broad daylight on a crowded street by today's villain, crack addict Richie Madano (William Forsythe, from The Rock and The Devil's Rejects), who leaves a mysterious Polaroid on Bobby's body. Richie's crew is freaked out, knowing they're doomed to be caught, but all Richie can say is that things are going to get hotter before the night's over. And he ain't kidding either. Having caused a traffic jam by parking his car in the middle of the street to take a hit off his pipe, Richie draws the ire of another driver. He responds by walking right up to her and putting a bullet through her head! And then he calmly walks away, his spooked crew following him lest they face the same fate. I gotta say, this is the most effective creation of a villain a Seagal movie has yet had. There's no elaborate plot, there's no fucking voodoo. There's just a fucked-up crackhead acting without a conscience and being fucking scary as he does it. This is, frankly, awesome, and Forsythe is playing it perfectly so far.

Gino gets the inevitable call from the precinct and rather than the immediate “It's time for revenge” reaction we normally see in a Seagal flick, Gino's reaction is instead a combination of shock and also reluctance. He's a divorced dad in the middle of his once-a-month weekend with his son, Tony, and doesn't want to miss out on it. But duty calls and Gino is forced to send Tony back home to mom (Jo Champa, from...nothing, really). Gino arrives on the scene – where the Polaroid has gone missing - and doesn't wait very long before telling Captain Donzinger (Jerry Orbach from Law & Order!!!!) that all he'll need is an unmarked cruiser and a shotgun to bring Richie in. Donzinger agrees and the hunt is on.

Elsewhere, the stars of a community theater knock-off of The Godfather get a call informing them of what Richie has done. They want him brought to them, alive and before the cops get him. Gino meets up with his mob contact, Frankie, and Frankie's boss Don Vittorio to discuss what should be done with Richie. Vittorio makes a good case when he says that the justice system can only give Frankie seven to ten years, but the mafia can...well, you know. If it's real vengeance you want, you go with the Don. Gino promises to do even worse if he gets to Richie first.

But, hey, it's time for an out of character aside with Steven Seagal. Driving down the road, Gino spots a car dropping a trash bag out the window into traffic. Gino stops and opens the bag to find a puppy inside, and Gino begs God to let him run into that asshole someday. Ah, the first twinges of animal rights activism in a Seagal movie. Remember this, oh, a month from now, alright? Trust me.

And another weird moment when a hooker offers Gino her services and he cackles like it's the most absurd thing he's ever heard. What, are you gay? What's so hilarious about a hooker asking you if you want sex? He even stops other people on the street and tells them like it's a joke or something. Weird.

Anyway, Gino eventually runs into Richie trying to set up some deal and it's time for the first car chase of the night, ending in a grocery where Richie tells his goons to take care of Gino while he goes off to settle some scores. In true Seagal fashion, Gino takes out six or seven guys in less than a minute, turning their own weapons against them and, as always, using the mystical powers of Aikido to send thugs a-flyin' without ever having to move from one spot in the middle of the room. God I love how action movie baddies always line up and run at the good guy one at a time, taking turns getting killed. They never learn.

That night, Gino visits Richie's parents, who he's known since he was a kid as he and Richie were childhood friends. Ma and Pa Madano want Gino to go easy on Richie and let him live, but Gino says that unless Richie turns himself in, he will have to die. Since Ma and Pa have no info to impart about Richie's whereabouts, Gino pays a visit to Richie's brother Vinnie at his bar. Vinnie and his patrons all refuse to talk and generally act like huge dicks, so Gino has a fine time pushing people around and wrecking the place until finally the goombas can take no more and it's a-fightin' time, with a big shot putting a five thousand dollar bounty on Gino's badge. The best part of this fight is when Gino goes at it with a guy called Sticks, the two of them using broken pool cues like nunchucks. It's so absurd it's awesome. After dispatching of everyone dumb enough to fight Steven Seagal, Gino tells Vinnie to tell Richie “I'm gonna cut off his head and piss down his throat!”. He may live up to this promise, too. He had the first part down pat in Marked for Death.

And now it's Montage Time~! as we see intercut sequences of Gino hitting the streets for tips, Richie kinda just wandering around, and some police busting a strip club (?) all set to some awful “rap” song that sounds like the Nickelodeon GUTS theme with a lot of extra drum machine added. Once that's out of the way, it's time for a scene both good and weird. After a brief meeting with Don Vittorio, Gino and Frankie go for a walk and reminisce about the good old days. Gino speaks of his Uncle Pino and a warm memory of Pino catching a thief and punishing him by locking him up in the trunk of the car while Pino and young Gino drove around town, finally letting the thief go when Gino got worried about his well-being. It's a sweetly sentimental story that seems to establish Pino as the origins of Gino's moral compass. But then Gino mentions that Pino was in the mafia, and that he's surprised he didn't follow Pino's footsteps and wound up a cop instead. Uh...the mafia is admirable? I mean, sure, they have their good side too, but sheesh they're still the mafia at the end of the day. Don Corleone might not have ever sold drugs and he may have been a good father, but he did assassinate people too. Kind of a mixed signals situation that seems like iffy moral territory to me.

And then there's an all-too-brief cutaway to Richie dropping in on a friend's chop shop to hang out for a while. I'm noticing that we're spending less and less time with Richie now and I don't like that. He's a really good character and his scenes at the beginning of the movie were intense, shocking, and downright brutal. And William Forsythe is so charismatic and so good at evoking complete insanity that he's flat-out captivating. This is a great performance that is suddenly being squandered like it's secondary when it's actually supposed to be the centerpiece of the damn movie! I can see how the filmmakers might have worried that a string of random acts of violence throughout the duration of two acts of the film could get monotonous - and that would almost certainly be true in most circumstances - but with a performance this brilliant, I severely doubt it would get boring at all. If anything, the idea that the random destruction of human life is wide-spread and not slowing down and is being caused all by one soulless man would add to the terror and suspense and create probably the best villain Seagal has yet faced! Why waste this gem by shortening his scenes? It's senseless.

But hey, I guess we need more investigation, so Gino goes to a club to visit Richie's sister Patty (Gina Gershon) who, like everyone else, has no clue where Richie is. While I fully accept that she could be lying, I don't exactly appreciate the way Seagal gets mad and pushes her around and then throws a bouncer over a friggin' balcony when the guy tries to, ya know, do the gentlemanly thing and tell the big, imposing martial artist to lay off the lady. Not exactly a good way to make yourself the good guy, Steven, but then again I guess this could be shades of grey like he's not too good to be bad. And it goes on when they go to Patty's office and Gino starts tearing the place up for no good reason. Like what, she's going to have printed, notarized documents marked “Where Richie is going to hang out on the night he decides to commit suicide by cop”? What does ripping through her files accomplish other than making her angry? During this completely warrant-free search, Gino stumbles upon a gun he assumes is not licensed and arrests Patty. Of course, the real reason for the arrest is to draw Richie out of hiding, so it's a sham from the get-go, but it still sounds like something that might, oh, violate the law a little bit. Not to mention the whole assault thing.

And the movie teases us with another too-short scene of Richie harassing the chop shop workers and cruelly mocking their boss' paraplegia. Another fine display of evilness, but cut off after like a minute so we can see Patty getting booked instead. After tossing the poor girl in a cell, Gino questions Patty about “Roxanne” a name he found written on a note one of the club's waitresses had passed to him. Back at the chop shop, things finally start heating up for Richie again as the cops bust in (not before Richie kills the paraplegic without cause (Thank you)). And I mean they bust in, ramming a van right through the wall and running a man over, an act they show no remorse for. They don't even acknowledge it. Yowza. While Richie and his crew make a rooftop escape, Gino peruses Bobby's desk. Yeah, we needed to cut away to that at this moment, didn't we? Shouldn't this have happened like thirty minutes ago? Gino finds a bag of cocaine, a stack of money, and some compromising photos of Bobby and a woman who sure don't look like his wife. Shouldn't the precinct have found all this when they cleaned out the desk? They do clean out the desk after an officer dies, you know. They don't just leave it alone like some kind of memorial. They need somewhere for the replacement to sit...Never mind.

Gino hits the streets again and gets a call on the radio asking him to swing by his apartment to see his wife for something or other. And then, like some weird comedy relief, the puppy pops up out of the passenger seat and Gino chuckles and says “Almost forgot about you!”. Yeah, so did we. You didn't think to drop the poor thing off at home like ten hours ago? You found it in the morning and now it's night! Poor dog. When Gino gets home, the big issue that required a radio bulletin is...Wifey wants to know if he's hungry. No. Shit. You know full well Gino's out there hunting down the bastard who killed his partner – your friend, by the way – and you call him off the case to offer him a snack and an Espresso? And since Gino is in the mood to tell a story, he accepts. He regales us with the tragedy of his father, a traveling knife sharpener (?) who died of a broken heart after disposable knives were invented and rendered his service obsolete. Really? Traveling knife sharpener? Driving a little cart down the streets of Brooklyn ringing a bell and calling out “Bring out yer knives!”? Was this in the 1800's in Sicily or something? Well, we have no time to ponder this as just as the story ends, some baddies break in and it's up to Gino to mechanically gun them down. Yawn. Since we can recognize the last gunman, we know this to be Richie's crew, but Richie doesn't seem too angry when he hears the news of their demise on his police scanner. Never mind that he's down to one last goon (his driver).

Having secured the wife and son, Gino head back to Patty's club (which, shockingly, lets him in) to ask the waitress, Terry, what her note means. Turns out Roxanne is the name of Richie's girlfriend, and she's the woman in the photo with Bobby. Finding Roxanne's name and address in Patty's Rolodex, Gino heads off and takes Terry in tow. And while they're in transit, Richie drops in on his brother Vinnie, who is still in the bar despite having a broken nose with profuse bleeding. A man who was shown losing most of his teeth is also still there. You have no one to go to for medical treatment? Richie pushes Vinnie around for not having the guts to shoot Gino. And when Frankie's boys show up, Vinnie's refusal to help Richie take them out results in Richie essentially deciding he has no brother and banishing Vinnie once and for all. Good, that guy was starting to get whiny and annoying. Lucky for Richie that the bar patrons are willing to join a random posse and help him wipe out the mafia crew right quick.

Gino arrives at Roxanne's place only to find her good and dead. Oh well, I guess. Gino then heads off to see Bobby's widow, Laurie, and immediately starts rifling through her purse (right in front of her!) only to find the Polaroid from Bobby's death scene, another shot of him with Roxanne. Turns out Laurie had found the photos and, in jealousy, sent one to Richie, never expecting he'd kill Bobby for revenge. Gino intuits that Bobby was a crooked cop who wanted to become someone like Richie, with lots of money and women. Well, suddenly I don't feel as bad as I used to about Bobby getting popped. Gino gets a call on the radio telling him that one of his street contacts spotted Richie at an old girlfriend's house. Gino knows the place and sneaks in, only to wind up in a gun battle. As you'd expect, he's on the winning side of things as he and his trusty shotgun blow a whole lot of bad guys to pieces. Eventually, the only one left is Richie and this is when both Gino and Richie run out of bullets. I cannot fathom portly William Forsythe doing hand-to-hand combat, but that's what it looks like we're heading for. And, yeah, it looks real goofy when Forsythe comes a-running and a-jiggling towards Seagal only to get thrown into a wall and bounce because he's so fat. I'm reminded of Chris Farley doing the inspirational speaker on SNL and running around the room. The fight is one-sided in Gino's favor. He doesn't even need any of that Aikido shit because Richie is such a big fat klutz that most children could fend off his attacks. It's really not fair. After whooping Richie senseless, Gino finally just buries a corkscrew an inch deep into his brain just as Frankie and his boys show up. Even though they wanted Richie alive, they decide to help Gino out (he took a bullet during the gun battle).

Epilogue: Flash forward a few days to Gino spending a day with his wife on the boardwalk when who should Gino spot but the asshole who threw the dog out of the car. Gino gives him a literal swift kick in the sack and the puppy pisses on him for good measure. Aw, happy ending!

My feelings are mixed on Out for Justice. It starts out fantastic, with a great villain and a great situation, but it deteriorates into tepidness. By the end, Richie isn't nearly the rampaging evil bastard he was to start off and the pace has slowed to a crawl. It's like a great movie and a so-so movie got rolled into one and there was more so-so than great. It's not terrible, but it's not all that good. It's just average. I'm just disappointed in how they squandered the potential. Overall, it's the best of these four Seagal movies I've reviewed this month, but that ain't saying so much. Above the Law was lame, Hard to Kill was decent, and Marked for Death was Godawful. “Alright” wins out over that field.

The real sad part is that Out for Justice didn't do so well at the box office. Domestically, it fell short of Marked for Death, taking in only $40 million compared to Marked's $57 million. For the first time, a Seagal movie had failed to top it's predecessor in receipts (when the predecessor sucks so hard, is it that much of a surprise?). An issue? You betcha. That's a big disappointment in the Hollywood machine when they expect you to keep bringing in exponentially higher receipts with every subsequent film. What to do to fix the problem? How about pairing Seagal off with a couple of A-listers who can give him some shine and revitalize his drawing power? That's what Hollywood had in mind and we'll see exactly how big it paid off in two weeks when I review Seagal's biggest hit, Under Siege.

Steven Seagal Month, Week Three : Marked for Death

The rise of Steven Seagal continues this week with Marked for Death. After doubling the box office of Above the Law with Hard to Kill, could Captain Squinty keep the trend going with a third hit? Let's find out.

Well, the movie sure wastes no time as we open with our hero, John Hatcher, chasing Danny Trejo (!!!!) through some South American marketplace. Anything with Danny Trejo is instant win, so this is easily the best opening Seagal has yet had. Seagal plays it rough, too, as upon capturing the man he violently interrogates him and then gags him and throws him in the trunk of a car. Wow, it's like the Samoa Joe school of being a babyface or something. After an impromptu strip club stopoff, Hatcher and his partner, Chico (!), head off to a big drug meeting of some sort to, well...buy drugs. Too bad they've gone to Danny Trejo's outfit, who are none too pleased with the way their compadre has been treated. How Danny got out of the trunk and told them what happened and who did it is just unexplained. The drug runners pull guns and in a moment I can't figure out, one of them shoots one of his own pals (!?) and then starts threatening Hatcher. Why'd you shoot your own man? It's so random and it happens so fast that it makes less than no sense. But we don't have time to linger on that as Hatcher quickly nabs a machete from one of the goons and choppy choppies the gunmens' hands off so he and Chico can make an exit stage left.

Along the way out of the compound, they senselessly decide to sweep every room (yeah, slow that getaway down to a halt) and at one point Chico wanders in on a naked woman. Being an idiot, Chico turns to leave and she gives him a few bullets to the chest for his stupidity. And then Hatcher kills her with a few of his own. So we've had the partner mortally wounded and avenged all in the opening ten minutes. Well, there goes that plot point. What is it with Seagal screwing up the dead partner/out for revenge thing? Anyway, after a jarring jump all the way to Chicago (as a title card informs us), Hatcher finds himself in church confessing his sins and admitting that in trying to bring down the bad guys, he became one of the bad guys himself. Ultimately, he decides he just has to give it all up and retire. Following the priest's advice, Hatcher goes home to see his family on what coincidentally happens to be family reunion day so the gang's all here.

Things get insanely dull as Hatcher looks around his childhood bedroom (inexplicably containing a wall-mounted gun collection) and then sets about cleaning said guns all while a tune that sounds like a soundtrack cue from from The Land Before Time plays in the background. You know that one scene when Little Foot mistakes his big shadow for his mother? Yeah, that song. And, hey, speaking of childhood memories, let's go visit the old Alma mater and see the high school football team in action. Hatcher reminisces a little with the coach (Keith David, from Dead Presidents) and then the two decide to head off to catch up. As they leave, they spot some scary black men (with the worst Jamaican accents) selling dope to kids behind the school, but Hatcher actually prevents coach from intervening. Why? Dunno. The movie doesn't have time to explain that as it's quickly off to that night when said scary black men arrange a meeting between their “mon” and some...I dunno, Afrikaners? I can't figure these guys out. They look Italian at first glance, but in close ups their leader's eye shape suggests something Asian, but he has a weird African accent. What the fuck is this man? Anyway, the man with no country meets the Jamaican drug lord known as Screwface. Gee, could that be a lame Scarface rip-off I sense? This Screwface looks like a cross between Milli Vanilli and a reject from Battlefield Earth with his unruly dreads and weird green eyes.

Terl you know it's true...

I would tell you what these men talk about but I can't decipher their fucking accents. The scene ends on a spooky note, I guess, when Screwface tells the other man that he can do bad things (I think that's what he said), and a shadowy clone of Screwface wanders through a nearby doorway cackling. Dun dun dun! Our ethnically-ambiguous friend later visits a psychic or witch or something who divines that Screwface is “muy malo” (no shit!?), and that some sort of spell ought to help. Said spell involves random nudity, a rooster, regurgitation, cigar smoking, and finally the death of the rooster. Voodoo is strange. But I guess it works, as Screwface is suddenly awakened from his slumber with a look of...fear...consternation...confusion...something on his face.

Hatcher and coach talk about how things have changed, how you used to only have to worry about your quarterback knocking some girl up, but now you have to worry about him OD'ing on cocaine. And then they go to a bar to PAR-TAY~! Appropriate response to the subject matter, for sure. Trouble sure has a way of finding Hatcher, though, as our ethnically ambiguous friend sends in some goons to take him out. Before the inevitable fight scene, though, we get some exposition from coach, who spots the Jamaicans again and goes on a ramble about his thirteen year old nephew dying in a crack house and yadda yadda. Hatcher just tells him to leave it alone again.

Oooh, twist! The goons start scoping the place out to make their move, only to be gunned down by some Jamaicans who bust in. Honestly didn't see that coming. I'd be tempted to suggest we have a “race war” plot going on, but then again they may all be the same race. Seriously what is that guy, A Jamasian or something? The Jamaicans flee after taking a few guys out, but the dealer that coach keeps spotting is left behind to finish off the last of them. Hatcher steps in to stop it, of course, and receives what I assume are threats for his trouble. The Jamaican dude said something like “Wally bonker dahhhhh. Did mik warking”. I think that last part was supposed to be “dead man walking”. Hatcher pistol whips him.

As the cops and EMTs clean up the bar, the movie takes the chance to have some Connie Chung knock off do a live news report explaining how Jamaican gangs “or posses” operate. In a word: Violently. Very violently. Still takes her two or three minutes to spit this out. Some feds arrive on the scene, including Hatcher's old pal Rosselli. Explaining what went down, Hatcher finally pins down our ethnically ambiguous friend as a Colombian (really?). Elsewhere, it seems Screwface's spidey-sense is strong, as he has located the voodoo priestess who cast the spell on him, and he promptly chops her head off.

Aw, Jeez. We now get a scene with nothing but Jamaicans in it as our recurring dealer (name please? Christ, Steven what is your problem with names?) addresses a group and I have no idea what is being said, what they are doing or what they are planning. It's just a lot of “Ooha Ooha. Wally didlle bee boo bah! Ahny jumbo ly! Povidah monkey now” and all that other indecipherable shit. I wonder if the closed captions on a TV broadcast would just say “[Jamaican bullshit]” every time these guys talk. And look, I'm not just saying this about their accents because I'm a racist bastard. That is part of it, but I also legitimately have no clue what these people are saying. None. They may be speaking in Swahili for all I know. What's really annoying is that Screwface shows up and I just know they're saying stuff that's important to the plot, but I can't make out a word of it. That's bad.

The following day, tragedy strikes when Hatcher visits his sister, only to have the house shot up by that same fucking Jamaican dealer. Are there only two Jamaicans with significant roles in this movie or what? It's either this guy or Screwface. Monotony, thy name is Marked for Death. Hatcher's little niece gets shot, and we get this really weird cut from Hatcher getting angry and jumping to his feet like he's going to rush outside and avenge her, to Hatcher calmly standing in the hospital awaiting the doctor's report. What happened in the meantime, there? Did he angrily drive the car to the hospital? Did he angrily call 911 and demand a “fucking ambulance”? Did he just have the taco shits? What was that face all about? And he got really calm. He's politely whispering to the doctor so as not to disturb other patients. It's the most jarring cut I've seen in a long time. Anyway, the little girl is in serious and unstable condition, and Hatcher demands she be treated “like the President of the United States”. What exactly gives him stroke over the doctor, I don't know, but ol doc whatshisname complies. And then we get out first Oscar clip of the night as Hatcher's sister breaks down and blames her daughter's near-death on him. HOW DARE YOU VISIT YOUR FAMILY UNAWARE OF ANGRY NEGROES TAILING YOU! I know distraught people say illogical things, but seriously, this is way up there. All Hatcher's done so far in the movie is retire, go drinking, and drop by to see his sister.

Suddenly, Hatcher gets angry again and marches right out of the hospital, with Coach inexplicably at his side. It's so random: one moment, Hatcher is walking alone and then Coach pops up and starts walking alongside him. Like they're partner cops or something, you know? Why? Is Coach going to get a gun and join Hatcher's quest for revenge? At least Hatcher is a cop. And then, just to add to the confusion, the movie immediately cuts to Hatcher busting in on a crook named Jimmy Fingers, and Coach is nowhere to be seen. Where'd he go? Did he just walk Hatcher to the exit? This scene is notable for finally naming our Jamaican friend. His name is Monkey. No, really. They had the balls to name a black guy Monkey. This could only be more racist if they named him Remus and gave him a nephew. Jimmy Fingers is a gun runner who apparently bailed Monkey out of prison and sold him the machine guns that wounded Hatcher's niece, and now Hatcher wants to know where that damn monkey..er, Monkey is. Jimmy pulls a gun and howls “I'm Jimmy Fucking Fingers, and I'm a made man!”. Hatcher puts a bullet through his brain and mutters “God made men”. OK, apparently Steven Seagal doesn't know what a “made man” is. Jimmy's Jamaican pal #1 on the left pops in to get his ass whipped into submission, but when Hatcher asks for Screwface's location, the thug throws himself out a window and kills himself rather than suffer the “fousan def” Screwface gives to squealers. I knew what he said that time, we're improving!

Screwface, hearing of Jimmy's death, finally learns to enunciate as he demands that Hatcher and his family be executed. Of course, I have no idea why he was so attached to Jimmy Fingers that he would want such revenge, but I'll just take the ability to understand what Screwface is saying and not look the gift horse in the mouth. Hatcher returns to his sister's house only to find it tagged with a crucifix with screw threads and the Idiogram, some wacky voodoo symbol that is supposed to be Screwface's calling card. He heads off to visit Leslie (Joanna Pacula, from Warlock: the Armageddon and Dinocroc!!!), a cop lady of some sort who was at the bar and first identified the Idiogram which I guess makes her our expert symbologist. Leslie explains that the markings on the house mean that the family has been MARKED FOR DEATH. Hatcher excuses himself to call his sister, WHO IS IN THE MARKED HOUSE and ask if the guards are still there. Turns out they aren't and then the phone goes dead. Dun dun dun! A Jamaican thug busts in and the struggle is on! Too bad for sis, she winds up in the clutches of Screwface himself, who inexplicably tells her to “stop the blood clot crying”. Yes, that is what he actually said. Okayyyy... Turns out Screwie has the living room set up for some voodoo ritual that likely involves human sacrifice. Hatcher hauls ass over there, and bursts in only to find that Screwface and crew have fled and left his sister alive for now.

Like any concerned brother would, Hatcher spends the next day ignoring his family and hanging with Coach, looking for Jamaican pushers to bust. They find one, but wind up in a car chase that is actually kinda boring until they crash into Tiffany's and Co and send the Holly Golightlys of the world running for cover. I love seeing rich white folk being terrorized. Once the bullets run out (and it takes a while), we finally get to see Seagal doing that Aikido martial arts shit of his as he sends thugs a-flyin' about the store. All told, Hatcher and Coach take out seemingly two dozen Jamaicans (what, were they driving a clown car? Where'd all those guys come from?), but accomplish nothing when you really think about it. This had nothing to do with the plot, unless we're supposed to assume that every Jamaican is affiliated with Screwface. And I guess they are, as Hatcher finds himself ambushed on the road, where a truck and a backhoe pin his car and crush it so as to trap him so that Screwface can toss in a molotov cocktail. Really? No voodoo this time? Lame. Hatcher gets out (duh) and takes Coach to meet Charles, a Jamaican cop who's been working with Rosselli. Sadly, Charles hasn't yet learned to enunciate. He (sorta) says that Screwface has returned to Jamaica and, after a weapons-collecting montage, our heroes are off to Jamaica. How they snuck all those guns through customs I know not. They just did. And we're talking machine guns and Uzis and shit.

In Jamaica, Coach and Charles get a lead on Screwface's girlfriend who apparently likes to hang out at a club. This club, by the way, is hosting a Jimmy Cliff concert. Jimmy Cliff being, of course, a legendary reggae musician and the badass star of The Harder They Come. Jimmy is, in all seriousness, singing the ballad of Screwface who's “time has come, you gonna ded tonight”. Screwface's girl is happy to dance to this tune. Hatcher probes the girl for some info but all she has to say is that Screwface has two heads and four eyes, which is the secret to his magic. Magic doesn't seem to do him much good, though, as Hatcher and friends manage to crash Screwface's party, sniping the guards from afar and then stealthily moving in to detonate a bomb and wipe out the posse in the chaos. While Coach and Charles gun down a seemingly endless barrage of goons outside, Hatcher sneaks into the building to go one on one with Screwface, but no such luck as guards take Hatcher down and set him up for one of Scewface's voodoo rituals. Hatcher gets loose, of course, and takes on the guards in only the second hand-to-hand battle of the film, which provides us the obligatory Neck Crank of Death for the evening. With that out of the way, Hatcher faces Screwface man to man in an exceedingly brief fight that ends in ten seconds when Hatcher steals Screwface's sword and lops his head off.

What, that's it? There's thirteen minutes left in the movie and we just killed the villain? The fuck? Hatcher and crew go back to Chicago...I think...and tell the other Jamaicans that Screwface is dead and they better leave, or else they'll be dead too. Charles even holds up Screwface's head!

How do you get that past customs!?

Things get really weird as the heroes back out of the room, only for Charles to be stabbed in the back by...SCREWFACE. Whaaaaaaatttttttt?! Maybe there's something to this voodoo shit after all! Hatcher chases Screwface upstairs (taking out some generic thugs along the way, of course) while Coach stays behind to hold off the other Jamaicans downstairs. Finally, Hatcher catches up to Screwface who admits that he was really a pair of identical twin brothers all along. Well fuck that voodoo crap all over. Hatcher and Screwface number two have a big ol' sword fight which, shockingly, Hatcher is largely on the losing side of until he PUTS HIS THUMBS THROUGH SCREWFACE'S EYES, throws him through a wall, snaps his spine over his knee, and tosses him down an elevator shaft. Jesus Christ, you killed him four different ways before he hit the floor! That's just sadistic. And that's all she wrote, folks.

This movie sucks. The voodoo conceit is stupid, half the cast is indecipherable, and worst of all it's boring. There's a lot of nothing in the first half, and the second half is so loaded with gun fights and so lacking in hand-to-hand combat that there's really no tension at all. Seagal and his pals have uzis and the bad guys have hand guns, it's a no-contest from the start! Who cares, then? I mean, yeah, I know Seagal never loses the hand-to-hand fights either, but at least those offer him the chance to kill guys in innovative ways. But even that doesn't happen here, as the limited amount of time devoted to said fights only allows Seagal enough time to do the same shit he always does: the Neck Crank of Death, bending a guy's arm backwards, and tossing a bunch of guys over tables. That's supposed to lead up to the innovative kills, but here it's all we get! That's lame! And the acting is terrible! Seagal does this awful accent – what accent it's supposed to be I don't know – that totally distracts in every scene. And the guy playing Screwface is so over the top absurdly evil it's hilarious. It's like he's parodying himself. And then there's the utter cruelty of the final fight. Yeah, I get it that Screwface is a bad mother and all, but he was basically tortured to death in a most cruel fashion. The only thing that saves his death from being unwatchably awful is the fact that Seagal is rather obviously mangling a crash test dummy in dreads and not an actual actor. This is the one time bad special effects work actually made a scene watchable.

This movie is AWFUL. Awful, awful, awful.

All told, it was a success though, taking in $57 million worldwide at the box office and $20 million more in rentals. But that doesn't mean it wasn't shit!

Ugh. Tune in next week for Out For Justice, which had damn well better be good!

Steven Seagal Month, Week Two: Hard to Kill

So when we last left our hero, he had killed Henry Silva, saved the Senator, done a lot of nonsensical things in the process, and made himself a tidy profit at the box office while also garnering critical praise. Steven Seagal had arrived. Now he was set to be America's next big action hero, and in 1990 he made his return to the silver screen with his second adventure, Hard to Kill. Was it as goofy as Above the Law? Were there more Billy Jack references? Would are next low-rent villain be another Hal Needham cast-off? Most importantly: Would it be a hit? Let's find out!

Our film opens in the seediest of seedy locations: a damp back-alley just outside a smoke and sparks factory on a dark and stormy night. This is the kind of cliché place where the final battles usually happen in this kind of movie. Two cars arrive for what is surely some kind of underhanded deal, but no worries: Seagal is on the scene to scope it out. For no reason, he begs the bad guys to get on with it so he doesn't have to miss the Oscars. Whatever. He recognizes one of the mooks involved, but can't quite place the others despite his mega-zoom spy camera. What, are you blind? And you've got a fucking microphone, are you deaf too? Ruh Roh! The talk turns to getting a corrupt, criminal-friendly politician into office. There's also talk of some sort of plane-related terrorism (“We want it to take off. We don't want it to land.”), but then Seagal totally botches it up by making a noise and giving himself away. The villainous politician steps into the light and it's...

Bill Sadler? Really? The Grim Reaper from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey is the bad guy here? Wow, this movie got lame in the first three minutes. Seagal takes out a baddie and then runs for his life. Where the fuck did his backbone go? He would've taken all these guys out single-handed in the last movie! Anyway, at the precinct police chief I Wish I Was Danny Glover – who is watching the Oscars - gets a call from our hero, Mason Storm as he is improbably named, who reports his findings from the meeting. Thanks for recapping what we just saw!

To the convenience store, where Mason asks A) where the keep the champagne and B) why the clerk isn't watching the Oscars. The clerk says he hates the Oscars. As is inevitable with action movie convenience stores, a bunch of punks waltz in. Before they've even done anything, Mason tells the clerk to call the cops and then he goes into Steven Seagal's patented “Angry Squint” mode. Oh, they have shotguns. Way to make that clear in the establishing shot, Mr. Director. So they hold the place up, shoot the clerk and then promptly get their asses kicked by Mason who makes sure the destroy the whole store with their bodies. The best is the last baddie, who Mason willingly gives the advantage to by getting down on his knees. But even with this edge, the dork still winds up face down on the ground with Mason TWISTING HIS FOOT OFF AT THE ANKLE. Holy shit that's the greatest thing I've ever seen. Suddenly, this movie rules!

Afterward, when the cops have arrived, a fellow officer jovially says “Looks like you won the Oscar tonight, Storm!”, to which Mason chuckles and winks in a most un-Seagal like manner. A triumphant Mason rides way into the night as “Feels so Good” by Chuck Mangione (if you can believe it), blares from his car radio. That's the most inappropriate song I can think of for this movie. Mason shares the sentiment and quickly ejects that tape from the radio and replaces it with the recording of the shady meeting. Finally, he arrives at home where he is greeted by his lovely wife. They head off to bed for a little fun, which is not the least bit interesting. What is interesting is how when they turn the lights off, the stairwell is suddenly bathed in a red glow. Where is that coming from? Along the way, they stop off at their son (the creatively-named Sonny)'s room where Mason gives him a stuffed monkey and then they say their prayers together. Aww. Always the family man, that Seagal. While Mason and his wife say their “I Love You”s, some gun-wielding hoods are sneaking into the house. They bust in and, in a first, they actually manage to shoot Mason a few times. Not that he slows down at all as he kills them one by one. At least, that is, until he suddenly freezes up as the last hood shoots the shit out of wifey. Elsewhere, Not Danny Glover also gets a visit from some hoods who blast him to pieces. Back at the Storm residence, the hoods plant drugs around the room, and little Sonny wanders down the hall to see what all the noise was. The hoods try to shoot him, but Sonny escapes out a SECOND STORY WINDOW. Geez, damned if you, damned if you don't. The kid's like five, for crying out loud.

At the hospital, Bill Sadler (we'll call him Trent. The movie hasn't bothered to name him yet, but that's what IMDb says his name is), is holding a tearful press conference about the apparent demise of Mason, who he says he worked closely with. Either he's full of it, or Mason is an idiot for not recognizing his voice. Trent is so obviously full of shit – he wanders about crying aloud about “What has society come to” and “Won't anyone think of the children” and all that kind of crap. He's a terrible actor, but everyone buys it. After that passes, some asshole cop says Mason was a coke-fiend (gee, ya think he's in on it?), and another cop (names, please?) threatens him with death for saying such a thing. For the record, the asshole is homicide and the second cop is Internal Affairs. Homicide wants IA to fuck off, but IA says the commissioner has put him on the case because of the money and the drugs found around the crime scene.

A doctor wanders into the scene to inform them that Mason is officially dead. Homicide is humbled by the news and walks off hanging his head in shame. And then another doctor approaches IA (Lt. O'Malley, they call him) and says he has “a live cop!”. Yes, Mason has survived if just barely, but O'Malley wants the hospital crew to keep it quiet so Mason can be disappeared for his own safety.

Well, part one of the vague nefarious plot was a success, as the plane sure didn't land, and it took a Senator down with it. This is good for Trent, the local assemblyman, as he is, as planned, named the new Senator. And then it's briefly montage time as Mason goes through a long coma and Trent rises through the ranks to become Vice President!!!

And I mean a long coma. Don't hospitals usually keep coma patients neatly trimmed and shaved? Or did they think “You know...I think the Mongolian look would work well for this guy.”? Things get even worse when we meet Nurse Creepy McStalksalot (Kelly Le Brock!!!!!!!!!), the woman who has way, way too much affection for Mason's lifeless form. She flips out when she hears he moved his head, she talks too him like a lover, and she even bought him a pet cat. He's fucking comatose! Back off! She even lifts up the blanket to admire his schlong and then begs him to wake up!!! FIRE HER. Her weird brand of loving seems to work, though, as Mason wakes up amidst a torrent of memories of the night his family died. While the doctors rush Mason off for treatment, Nurse Creepy follows her shadowy instructions to inform now-Captain O'Malley of Mason's awakening. Too bad O'Malley is no longer with the precinct, meaning they'll have to defer the call to his replacement. In the meantime, Nurse Creepy checks in on Mason, who says they need to get out of town soon or else they'll both be dead within the hour. What, do the hoods have an insider in the medical community? Would Trent even still have them around?

Well, I guess he's right, as a mystery man in a doctor's coat walks into the hospital, heralded by a creepy synth chord. Even though no one has seen him before, they still let him have access to the patients list for the coma unit, and then they let him go in. I'm having flashbacks to Tom Cruise using “I'm a doctor” to get his way in everything in Eyes Wide Shut. Evil doc finds that Mason is gone from the ward and just to be a dick, he shoots a security guard. And then, as Mason is being wheeled back to the ward, evil doc kills the orderly too. Improbably, Mason, who's practically paralyzed after seven years without movement, manages to pull his gurney along the wall and through a door to hide or something. And then he makes it onto an elevator. What, is it going to be a gunman vs. man in a bed chase? I can't wait to see Mason speeding down the highway in his hospital bed. Well, actually, Mason is dumb enough to send the elevator up instead of down (cornering yourself on the top floor is such a great idea right now), but then he fixes the problem by going all the way down to the basement. ONE. PRESS THE ONE! GO TO THE FIRST FLOOR AND LEAVE. Lucky for the dumbshit, the elevator stops on the coma floor along the way and Nurse Creepy hops on. She rushes him out the door and into her car for a speedy getaway.

Later, the inept gunman reports to Trent about the epic fail of an assassination attempt, and Trent's great idea is to blame the mayhem and death at the hospital on Mason. Are you fucking stupid? Who's going to believe that a man awoke from a seven year coma and immediately went on a killing spree? He's practically a quadriplegic from the muscle atrophy! Oh, and Trent is being referred to as Senator so that whole VP thing was a red herring I guess. At an improbably palatial country estate, Mason recuperates and even takes in a little TV. The Geraldo show is on. What a cruel new world Mason has awoken into. Desperate, Mason rolls out of bed and crawls on hand and knee to escape the horror. He then spots a local news report making him out as some kind of crook and calls the station to let them know they can have the scoop on proof that he's innocent. When the news of the alleged proof hits the air, Trent has his men put a tail on the reporter in hopes that he'll meet Mason in person somewhere.

And now it's time for a tender moment as Mason and the nurse (fuck it, I'll just call her Kelly Le Brock) chuckle at how hokey Mason's beard looks. Yes, I'm serious, the movie just called out it's own makeup department for doing a shitty job. And then it's time for the Steven Seagal semi-autobiographical backstory of the night. Mason tells Kelly to go to Chinatown with a grocery list, which he has written in “Chinese”. That's not a language...it's either Mandarin or Cantonese, guys. Anyway, this sparks Mason to discuss his history with the Chinese: he was raised in the orient, where his father was a missionary. Being the only whitey around, Mason learned to fight for protection. His sensai, however, taught him that it is more important to heal than to hurt. Aww.

The next day, Mason has lost the shitty beard and cut his hair and Kelly Le Brock has found some archival newspapers from the aftermath of the murders. An angry Mason does what any Steven Seagal hero would, and studies some Eastern mystical bullshit and lifts a bunch of weights. What a weird training montage. He's alternating between some kinda acupuncture (with flaming needles!) and doing weight training and punching a piece of wood. After that bit of strangeness, Mason finds a phone number in his hospital records. It turns out to be some kind of retirement village or something, and somehow Kelly Le Brock has reasoned that O'Malley must be there (he's not that old!). The lady running the place says he isn't, but Kelly finds a badge in the office and scribbles something down.

After a rather pointless love scene, Kelly heads over to her friend Martha's place, which happens to be being staked out by the inept gunman and crew. A neighbor informs Kelly that Martha is dead and that she was found in, wouldn't ya know it, Kelly Le Brock's house. While the baddies tail Kelly, Mason arrives home to find O'Malley waiting for him with the good news that Sonny survived, but was vanished by the cops to keep him safe. He's grown up to be a prime athlete. O'Malley also reveals that he spent years analyzing the audio tape of the meeting on the dock and found nothing. Fucking Trent is all over TV and no one can recognize his voice? Christ. He continues on to say that he doggedly investigated Mason's seeming demise but found nothing and was repeatedly told to back off, though he refused to do so until his mother was run off the road and paralyzed. Mason vows revenge. Later on, whilst thinking, Mason connects the audio tape and Trent when he remembers hearing Trent say “you can take that to the bank!”, which wound up becoming his campaign slogan. Dun dun dun!

“I'm gonna take you to the bank, Senator Trent. To the BLOOD BANK!” I can't believe Steven Seagal actually said that. That's something Loren Avadon would say in King of the Kickboxers. Kelly arrives home and Mason decides it's time to hightail it. But while they're packing, the baddies rush in armed to the teeth, which means of course that they are quickly and easily disposed of by Mason. After hopping into a jeep, Mason and Kelly are confronted by more baddies who, luckily, are straight out of an A-Team episode and have an easier time shooting the dirt than their target.

Driving into the city, Mason stops when he sees a group of Latinos and offers to trade them his shot-up jeep for their low rider. And they accept. Why?! Later, in an inexplicable moment, Kelly and Mason pose as real estate agents to get into Mason's old house so he can look around. And, oh yeah, retrieve the footage of the meeting from his hidey spot. They head off to a hotel to meet the reporter, but O'Malley hasn't shown up with the audio yet. The baddies have tailed him to where Sonny is being hidden. Whilst O'Malley is busy rushing Sonny off, some crooked cops (including homicide from the hospital) have followed some leads right to the hotel where they find Mason and Kelly. The chase is on as Mason and Kelly steal a car from the valet.

Elsewhere, O'Malley and Sonny are at the train station and soon find themselves cornered by baddies. O'Malley valiantly gives his life to allow Sonny time to run. Luckily, Mason and Kelly show up just as the baddies are going after Sonny. After a long foot chase, Mason stops the baddies in Chinatown and totally wrecks an obligatory Chinese restaurant in the process of whipping ass. After delivering the Neck Crank of Death, Mason takes Sonny and runs. After dumping the brat in Kelly's lap, Mason heads off to Trent's mansion. He quickly stumbles upon a room of henchmen and rather than just shooting them, he puts the gun away and engages in hand to hand combat. Why? Because he's Steven Seagal, dammit. The fight is short and ends with inept gunman getting a pool cue through the neck. “That's for my wife! Fuck you and DIE!”. Now THAT's a Steven Seagal line. Finally, Mason finds Trent hiding in a closet and SHOVES A SHOTGUN DOWN HIS THROAT. But rather than simply killing him, Mason leads Trent around like a dog on a leash and vows to put Trent behind bars. “A nice petite white boy like you won't remain anal retentive for very long!” THAT IS A STEVEN SEAGAL LINE!!!! SWAT shows up to arrest Mason, but then the chief walks in and says he saw the film and knows Mason was set up and all is OK and Trent is under arrest. Sonny and Kelly show up for a tearful celebration as the footage plays on the news.The End. The anti-climactic end.

Well, Hard to Kill is better than Above the Law. But that's like saying a TNT original movie is better than a Sci-Fi channel original movie. It's silly and total nonsense, but it's also got a darker edge to it and Seagal has some sweet catchphrases and some way more bad ass moves, and that's what it's all about, really. Hard to Kill is perfectly acceptable as brainless time filler. I'd even go so far as to say that I actually kinda liked it. Yeah, I'll pick at the really stupid parts, but I'd watch it again to fill a Saturday afternoon. Good job, Seagal, you improved, as did your revenues as Hard to Kill brought in $47 million, more than twice what Above the Law earned. Now Seagal has two films and two hits under his belt. Will this trend continue? Find out next week with Marked for Death!

Oh, by the way, do you think Seagal wanted an Oscar? I got this funny feeling...

Steven Seagal Month, Week One: Above the Law

Ah, Steven Seagal. For years one of the bigger names in action movie-dom thanks to his imposing figure, martial arts fighting style, and ruthlessly violent fight scenes, he has brought in more than $850 million at the box office worldwide. People love seeing a big badass whoop the ever loving shit out of the bad guys (the more generic the baddies, the better), and that was all Seagal provided, and audiences ate it up. Beginning in 1988 with his debut, Above the Law, Seagal had a meteoric rise to fame and success, which came to a crashing halt only 6 years later. Why? Well, we're here to find out. All March long I'll be chronicling Seagal's rise with his first four movies, and next month we'll not only see his pinnacle of box office success, we'll also find out where it all went horribly, horribly wrong. So let's get started, shall we?

This week's film: Seagal's debut in Above the Law.

So the movie begins by essentially giving us Seagal's own life story, with some tweaks to fit it to his character here: born in Italy, raised in America, super-patriotic but nonetheless itching to get out and travel the world, he wound up in Asia and studied the martial arts. And then we see Seagal teaching a martial arts class by just beating everyone up real good. That's the best way to teach anyone anything, beating them so severely they'll forget what you told them. Seriously, there's a clothesline in there like it's pro-wrestling. Steve's voice over continues, now entirely fictional, as he tells us of being invited to an American Embassy party where he was recruited into CIA. Why? I dunno. He just says he was. And then he says his eyes were opened, a statement which is followed by some lovely Vietnam War footage.

Is this Above the Law or Billy Jack?

So it's 1973, and Steve and some fellow soldiers are trolling along the Vietnam-Cambodia border, where they meet up with a helicopter delivering some men to perform what one of Steve's buds calls “chemical interrogation”. I hope that's like the naked LSD trip they made the guy take in The Good Shepherd. That was sweet. Steve asks if these guys are with the Agency, but his friend says they're “from a page that ain't even in the book”.

Cut to that night, where it pretty much is the naked LSD trip, but the interrogation leader, Zagon (played by MEGAFORCE's gay cowboy villain Henry Silva), has given their hostage a massive dose, and the man can't even speak except for groans. Zagon, who is sooooooo clearly our villain (he has his own signature musical sting and everything), calls the man a pussy and abuses him a in a manner that screams “HATE ME! I'M DYING AT THE END OF THE MOVIE, SO HATE ME!” The victim even dies in the end. Zagon is doomed. It gets better. Zagon attacks another detainee and tells him “never fuck with my opium!”

He killed a man with an overdose and didn't care, he's a drug runner, and he's PLAYED BY HENRY SILVA. Zagon is the most obvious bad guy of all time. The only way this movie can possibly redeem this is if Zagon turns out to be a good guy.

That's strange...I just got the feeling I'm gonna kill this guy some day.

And they just keep piling it on, folks. Seagal asks Zagon what the fuck any of this has to do with, ya know, military intelligence, and Zagon gets all appalled at the sound of those words. “Who da fuck is dis cherry?!” Seagal, who finally gets the name Nico, is offended by Zagon's tactics, but Zagon warns that he can make people disappear. Nico won't back off, though, and when Zagon tries to dismember his hostage, Nico busts out some KUNG FU FIGHTIN'~! With a fist of doom to Zagon's temple and a...wacky thing...to a sidekick before his fellow officers force Nico out of the room. Nico has to flee the country back to the US, a trip which, according to the time stamp on screen, took fifteen years. Nico and his wife, Sharon Stone, are having their baby baptized. And this baby is horrifying, because it looks like a mini-me of Seagal, right down to the gigantic dark eyes and pronounced brow.

At the after-party (?) Seagal's new partner, Pam Grier, is inexplicably the center of everyone's attention. But why linger on character development when Nico's...um...mama...aunt...neighbor...friend?...is crying over her daughter running off with that boy the family doesn't like. Nico basically brushes the issue off, half-heartedly promising to take care of it after work (you didn't take the day off for the baptism?). And so we go to work, Nico and Pam driving around, Pam joking over he walkie with other cops about how it's her last week on the streets.

DEAD.

Nico pulls over to take a piss (yes) in a dusty bar (yes) full of drunks who don't like him (yes). He starts asking about the missing girl, prompting mockery and insults from the drunks (yes), and then one guy jokes about fucking the girl (yes!) and then Nico beats him up (yes!!), leading to a bar brawl (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!). Nico quickly disposes of several men and then forces the asshole barkeep (who gives the drunks commands like he's Jimmy Hart leading the Hart Foundation or something) to take him to the girl. She's upstairs doing all kinds of drugs with her man, who knows better than to try anything and says “this is exactly what it looks like”. Nico teaches him a lesson by repeatedly slamming the man's head into the mirror they were doing coke lines off of, and then throwing him around the room like RoboCop arresting Kurtwood Smith. The ass-whipping spills out into the hall, the girl alternately insulting Nico and begging his mercy all the time, until the dude offers up some dope on a shipment of, well, dope coming in.

And now it's what I like to call the Snoopy Scene of the movie: a dark and stormy night! Nico plants a bug to stake out the lawyer orchestrating the coke deal. After picking up the info, Nico and Pam follow the coke lawyer to a club. Pam, who irrationally hates clubs for no reason other than “the element”, whatever that means, doesn't want to go in but Nico promises a party~! YAY~! Party~! They head inside, they spot the lawyer and his client, and then they dance. And that's it. That was pointless.

Oh, and Pam has to give us the “I'm too old for this shit” rigmarole to reenforce the fact that she's DEAD MEAT.

Flash forward to the drug deal going down. Nico, Pam, and a bunch of other cops are disguised as meat packers (?) at a random seedy location, where coke lawyer, now named Chichi, and his client arrive to pick up their shipment. But then feds swarm in and blow Nico's sting all to shit. There's a gunfight here that's actually pretty good, except for one improbable truck flip (why would there be a mountain of meat shaped perfectly as a jump ramp for this vehicle to “accidentally” drive over and flip off of?). And then we get the requisite impossible car chase as Nico rides on top of ChiChi's getaway car, trying to find a way to stop it. Reaching in through the passenger window and strangling Chichi's client does the trick nicely. Inspecting the shipment, the coppers find an engine block filled with military explosives instead of the expected drugs.

Chichi and his client, apparently having made bail, spend the night with their lawyers working out what to do about that crazy cop. Client, who looks like Fausto from Ghosts Can't Do It and talks like Santino Marella from WWE (“what-a are you-a going to do-a?”) wants Nico in prison. Not dead? Leaving the office, Chichi and the now-named Salvano run into (dun dunn DUN) Zagon, who warns that he wants no more problems from these morons.

At the precinct, the coppers explain that Salvano is wanted by the feds for involvement in some shadowy stuff the feds won't divulge, and that the cops need to stand down. Nico, of course, refuses to do so. Pam says he'll need her, and so she comes along to stake out Salvano. They wind up in a church where literally nothing happens except Salvano saying a prayer and then leaving. Nico and Pam, now finally named as Dolores, try to follow but the priest pops up and recognizes Nico and slows them down, letting Salvano get away. Priest takes them down to the basement and shows how some room was broken into. A room full of Mexican illegals who have sought sanctuary, it seems. I suppose now Nico has to protect the beleaguered minority? This is Billy Jack, isn't it? Come on, throw a school into the mix, I dare you. Father asks Nico to start attending church again and the next day, Nico obliges. It's sermon time~! Father talks about the government doing wrong and whatnot.

OK, it's official. I AM watching Billy Jack again. Anyway, Nico spots a woman walking out of the church but leaving her bag behind which can only mean one thing

BOMB

This small bomb sends everyone – everyone except Nico, anyway – flying for yards, smashing into walls and stained glass windows, and fills the room with smoke and fire and ballyhoo. Yep, that;s C-4 alright, the same thing they confiscated from Salvano earlier. I love how Nico doesn't flinch, doesn't move, and doesn't even get any soot on him. What, is Steven Seagal God all of a sudden? The priest dies, Nico's mama loses an eye, and Nico gets pissed. Or constipated.

He spots a superior officer in the hospital hallway and corners him to get some answers about why Salvano was let go, but Commander whatshisname is all indignant and just starts mocking “all that chop-suey crap” Nico does. Why? I dunno. Nico promises to find out the name of the fed who signed for the explosives, and Commander Pricky McDouchebag just shuts up. And now it's montage time, as Nico and Dolores seperately investigate Salvano and the bombing. A car full of stereotypical spics pulls up to Nico and take him at gun, knife, machete, and baseball bat-point. Nico, though, easily wrestles the machete away and begins HACKING MEN TO DEATH (no blood though. I guess squibs were too fancy for this movie?) until only the obnoxious leader of the group is left. Leader runs for his life, but Nico is right on his heels as they cover seemingly half the city on foot, including at one point running through what I surmise was a Sound Effects factory, as leader ran in to a chorus of “shattering glass”, “glistening blade” and “fender bender” noises that have no logical origin. Nico finally catches the man, gets the scoop that the attack was indeed ordered by Salvano, and then gives the guy a KO knee to the face for good measure. Conveniently, this last part happened mere feet from a guy who is the lead spic's friend, which means we're immediately in another fight. A brutally one-sided one, as Nico levels the man with a heart punch.

Sharon Stone finally gets to say and/or do something (halfway into the damn movie) as she and Nico lie in bed later that day listening to news reports about the chuch bombing (yes, it's still the same day), and she asks what the fuck they were doing in a church anyway. Nico has no good answer and just says some vague shit about “I want answers and I need time”. What? The phone rings, bringing an ominous warning from a CIA agent, telling Nico that some heavy shit is going down and Nico and his family need to run for their lives. Sharon wants to know why the CIA is calling at 2 AM, but judging from the broad daylight out the window...they aren't. Later that night (that's when the sun goes away, just so you know) the police show up to arrest Nico on orders from the feds. At the precinct, they reveal that they've followed his whole investigation since the stand down order, and are pretty much booking him for being too dedicated a cop, I guess. OK, so it's illegal to wire tap and set up stings without authorization, but really, this guy's a one-man army, wouldn't you let him have a bit of free reign when he's clearly getting somewhere with this Salvano shit? Nico winds up having his badge revoked.

Nico meets up with Dolores to hear what she's found out, namely that high-ranking intelligence agencies are involved in drug trafficking. Nico, of course, is intent on using this info to take some suckers down. After a pointless visit to the church for a conversation with Sister Vague Accent (she's either Irish, British, German, Swedish, or Guatemalan. I'm not sure which, but she does phase through all of them), Nico gets pwned by Dolores, who vows she can handle the investigation by herself and tells him to go home. Stopping at a school crossing along the way, Nico is attacked by a squad of goons wielding machine guns who shoot his car to pieces. No worries, though, he magically phased through the seats so he can pop out from underneath the trunk right when the goons are reloading. One of the goons, a rotund man, steps forward and says “you can't drop us all FATASS” in a moment of great irony. Nico responds by putting a bullet through the man's heart.

Nico corrals the goons into an Indian convenience store, which just screams fight scene. And indeed, Nico finds himself taking on the four remaining goons singlehandedly, destroying the shop in the process. Including the obligatory store front window.

Jumping ahead, Nico's mama, wife, and baby are snuck off for their escape to wherever. Nico stays behind to nab Pricky McDouchebag, or Special Agent Neely as he is now known (why does it take so long for people to get names in this movie?) after the agent has, he says, solicited a child prostitute. Nico forces the agent to use his authority to get them into the evidence locker to get the C-4, but it turns out to have been taken away by CIA days ago, specifically the agent who told Nico to get his family out of town. Enraged, Nico takes Neely out to a lake and forces him to strip to his undies and go for a swim. Why? I dunno.

Off to a tech convention to meet some random Asian woman who apparently has some kind of hacking capabilities. She gets Nico into a CIA dossier database. Turns out CIA has sent five agents, all of them trained assassins, to town all in the same week. Ruh-roh Raggy~! This is probably where I should mention Padre Tomasino, a priest who was the target of the church bombing but lived. Nico has vaguely referenced him on occasion throughout the second half of the film, but this is the first time they actually establish that he's a target of the government. Apparently harboring illegals is riskier business than we even thought. Sheesh. Nico sets out to find Tomasino, who is in hiding, and protect him.

Elsewhere, Sister Vague Accent is ambushed by, I presume, the CIA assassins. They find Tomasino in her house. The assassins subject Tomasino to the nefarious chemical interrogation and (dun dun dun) Zagon is leading it all. He wants to know if Tomasino has divulged “our plans to kill the senator”. Um...what? What are you talking about? Dolores, Nico and Bobby Heenan (seriously, this guy could pass for The Brain), arrive outside. Nico tells Dolores she has to stay in the car while the menfolk take care of business. Is she going to die or not? What else is she there for? Too old for this shit; she's retiring; she's a woman; and she's the hero's partner. KILL HER so her death must be avenged! That's her purpose, you idiots. Anyway, the chemicals don't work and Zagon decides to move onto phase two, which is good ol' fashioned dismemberment. Right then, Nico and Bobby bust in and start a-killing. Bobby gets hit in the shoulder and he and Nico are forced to retreat to the hall, where Dolores is waiting to back them up. Oh good, someone kill her! There's only 24 minutes left, but we can make it work still!

Thank you.

The firefight spills onto an elevated train which is full of the sounds of screaming pedestrians, even though everyone is sitting still and not moving their lips. The magic of dubbing. Nico hops onto another train and lives another day. Nico visits Dolores' house for a weepy moment.

DAMMIT, SHE'S NOT DEAD! You got shot in the fucking chest with a shotgun and you lived? FUCK YOU AND YOUR BULLETPROOF VEST! The next day, Nico visits his...whoever, who tells him that Dolores will be fine. Nico celebrates and, well, doesn't that kinda ruin the whole movie? Everything's fine~! Hooray~! Who cares about fucking Henry Silva now? What, we still have to go all Billy Jack and save the migrants? They're in a church, they're fine. Anywho, Sharon Stone begs Nico to back off and leave this whole thing alone, the assassins having sent photographic proof of how close they are to the family and that they can kill them at any time if he keeps bothering them.

He, of course, ignores her and goes to scout Zagon's hideout. Nico's buddy Nelson (the one from the ominous phone call) is there to bust him, though. Here's our chance for improbable exposition as the two discuss the corruption of CIA, with their trafficking and their assassination schemes. After that crap, Nelson takes Nico at gunpoint and – oh, there's more exposition. Now Nico is complaining about CIA destroying cultures by inciting and prolonging wars. Alright, I get it. Government sucks. Mercifully, Zagon and his thugs, including the barkeep and Salvano (???) show up. Time for another firefight. Nelson bites it quickly, and Nico takes his gun and car to make a getaway. Salvano winds up on the back of the car, and Nico backs it right out a wall of the inexplicably sky-scraper tall parking garage to send Salvano plummeting to his death. The car doesn't fall because Steven Seagal is magical. Despite a valiant effort, Nico winds up being cornered and kidnapped at the end of it all.

And now it's off to kill that Senator no one cares about. Zagon and crew have Nico tied up in the kitchen, where Zagon uses the old WCW Coal Miner's Glove gimmick to give him a thorough walloping. And then, of course, it's time for a massive shot of the magic drug. Nico plays dead so he can bust out a surprise attack. Why the drug doesn't affect him, I don't know. The thugs all bite it, Nico breaks a few of Zagon's bones before the obligatory Neck Crank of Death, and well...movie over (and yes, this fight scene was just that brief. So anti-climactic)? All the baddies are dead, but there's still like six minutes left. Nico stumbles into the lobby just in time to collapse from the drug. Luckily Dolores and Heenan are there to take care of him. The next day, the senator visits Nico's house for a personal thank you, including the promise to bring the baddies to justice.

THEY'RE DEAD, YOU BOOB.

Nico gives a deposition to some judge lady and basically starts telling the movie's story over from the beginning. That's your ending? It should have ended with a triumphant pose over the bad guy's corpse, or perhaps a nifty catchphrase. But a deposition? That's lame!

Above the Law is stupid, nonsensical, predictable (except in the one instance when it should be!), and downright goofy at times. At best, it's the kind of thing you might watch on TNT on a really, really bored Saturday afternoon. It's the kind of thing you can mildly enjoy if you don't think at all, but if you even start to apply logic to it it turns into frustration. It was a decent hit, though, bringing in $20 million at the box office, and it even won some critical praise (Roger Ebert gave it three stars!). Certainly, it's not worth paying theatrical admission price for, not even whatever that would have been back in the 80's. And, oh yeah, it's a Billy Jack remake in more ways than one, and that's a miserable legacy to attach yourself too.

Steven Seagal's rise to fame continues next week with Hard to Kill!

Masochism: It's Steven Seagal Month~!

He's Above the Law. He's Hard to Kill. He's Marked for Death. He's Out for Justice.

Four weeks, four reviews.... Steven Seagal's first four movies! Witness (with profound horror) the rise of one of America's doofiest action heroes in the films that made his name - and made utter pap like On Deadly Ground possible - beginning this weekend.