I have another fine trio of Steven Seagal reviews tonight.
From 1990-1995 Steven Seagal was enjoying his peak popularity and was a real A-list movie star.
During this time he both married and divorced Kelly LeBrock, was banished from SNL, and allegedly inappropriately asked Jenny McCarthy to undress during her audition for Under Siege 2.
Don’t worry though, this is a redemption arc.
Just like last time, after the reviews, I will make a determination and update the list of Top 5 Seagal Movies.
Lets go!
Hard To Kill
Released: FEBRUARY 1990
Director: BRUCE MALMUTH
Writer: STEVEN MCKAY
Stars: STEVEN SEAGAL, KELLY LEBROCK, WILLIAM SADLER
Steven Seagal is Mason Storm, an LAPD Detective who uncovers a plot between the mob and a dirty politician to murder their way to a US Senate seat.
A hit team kills his family but they fail to finish off Mason, leaving him in a coma. Miraculously waking up 7 years later, Mason is out for revenge — and Hard to Kill.
This was actually my introduction to Steven Seagal, I was in my late teens and it came on cable’s USA Network. As I was flipping channels my dad came in the room and of course, being an old guy was like:
“Oh hard to kill? You should watch this, Steven Seagal is great.”
Well at this point in my life my choices on how to spend my night were few: it was either Hard to Kill or the daily 2-hour block of Spongebob Squarepants… probably more on that later.
At this age, I was starting to develop some opinions on movies and already thought of myself as a “movie guy.”
Sadly my taste consisted of the IMDB Top 100, like most teenagers too scared to step out of line and admit I liked something weird or dumb. I think you might have caught me saying Shawshank was my favorite movie a few times.
Good grief.
I watched it and loved it. I still love Hard to Kill.
I don’t care who knows it, I want to yell it from a mountain top. This is a great movie.
It opened my pretentious eyes to the fact that action movies can just be good movies in general. And that a great movie with only a 90-minute run-time requires a tight script and true talent to pull off.
Best part about it? Totally the coma.
Adding a coma to your story is like a cheat code for some cheap yet effective character development.
After Mason wakes up, we get to fast-forward seven years and see that the dirty assemblyman is now a dirty senator, and his IA friend in the department actually saved and adopted Mason’s son.
His son is still alive!
This was nice, it warmed my heart.
Probably the most powerful development in the movie happens to Kelly LeBrock’s character.
See, she was the nurse that looked after him for 7 years in the coma ward.
And she thought he was handsome and sneaked a peek at his dick every day for 7 years.
That’s not a joke, she lifts his hospital gown and remarks that he has a giant weenie and begs him to wake up soon. This happens in the movie.
After he wakes from his long nap she helps him escape some assassins at the hospital.
Then she takes him away to her secret ranch, where he can retrain his muscles and practice some punches while planning his revenge.
This was all part of her plan because there is one part of his body that still requires a training partner… and you think he’s gonna deny her? I mean look at how big her hair is!
Plus its been 7 years, know what I’m saying?
Surely no one associated with Film Goblin has ever had a dry spell that long, right?
Guys??
So after that, he murders all the bad guys and takes down the senator.
The end, revenge taken.
But there is one thing I have been thinking about, at the beginning of the movie he mentions The Oscars several times.
It’s on TV the night his family is murdered, he says to himself he can’t miss The Oscars, and he tells his wife how great The Oscars are.
Is he trying to say something? I would be okay with Hard to Kill winning best picture that year. Dances with Wolves took home the gold instead, but you know what?
The Last Samurai was a better Dances with Wolves than Dances with Wolves. We would have lost nothing.
Should you watch this movie?
Please watch this movie.
Did I enjoy watching this movie?
Every time I watch it I enjoy it. Every minute I am entertained.
Is it a good movie?
Yes, it’s a great movie, not just a great Seagal movie.
Marked For Death
Released: OCTOBER 1990
Director: DWIGHT H LITTLE
Writers: MICHAEL GRAIS, MARK VICTOR
Stars: STEVEN SEAGAL, KEITH DAVID, BASIL WALLACE
Steven Seagal is John Hatcher, a disillusioned DEA agent who believes that the drug war is a lost cause.
While undercover in Columbia, one of his partners and several innocents are killed when a drug deal goes south.
Back in the US, he resigns from the agency and returns to his hometown to start a new life. But when the drugs follow him back and threaten his community and family, he goes back to action and is Marked For Death.
Alright so before we continue with the review we have to take care of some boring stuff.
While doing research I have read a few stupid things from random internet people, basically echoing the virtue signaling in this contemporary review.
Not from everyone, the YouTube videos and other reviews I read didn’t really mention any racism. I now list a few things for your consideration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shower_Posse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yardie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Coke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obeah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_Patois
So these things are real. They are not invented by racists.
I know this will shock some people.
There is a group of ethnic Africans who live on an island called Jamaica. They speak a different language that is English-derived and sounds funny because it is vaguely understood by us. Cannabis use has also been customary in Jamaica for over a century. A religion similar to Voodoo has been practiced by some people there.
Now I am not saying that Marked For Death is the most accurate portrayal of Jamaican criminals in movie history or that it has documentary-style fidelity of Jamaican culture. Or even that the first thing you should say when someone mentions they are from Jamaica is “Hey have you seen Marked for Death? haha.”
Now I will ask this in my conclusion and this will be the part where I anally rape all the leftists with my big, big brain:
How many times have you heard someone call The Godfather or The Sopranos racist?
Okay, that’s over.
We can have fun now and I’ll pretend this is where the review really starts.
The best parts of Marked For Death?
Oh, its gotta be the bad guys and the Seagal kills.
Keith David is also a welcomed sight.
The Shower Posse Jamaican mafia is pretty scary. Their leader Screwface is always being weird doing a ton of drugs and telling his gang to worship him. The gang members themselves are also insane, either shooting up a bar to just kill one guy or randomly committing suicide to escape getting their arms broken by Seagal.
Oh, you like seeing arms broken?
You like watching Seagal kill people, you sick slob?
You are in for a treat, because Marked for Death has the best takedowns of any movie that I’ve reviewed so far.
It also has one of the strongest third acts that I have seen in any movie, not just for this review series.
Just when Screwface gets away in what seems like the final encounter, they decide to follow him to Jamaica. There is even a sweet “gear up” scene where Seagal and Keith David are sawing off shotguns and milling silencers to smuggle for the attack on the Screwface compound.
It’s like another tiny movie added to the end!
They even managed to fit in a twist. They didn’t have to do that, I was already going to give this movie 10/10.
They wanted to put a twist in this movie because they cared about me, the viewer.
They wanted to be sure that I was entertained until the last minute.
Get this: Screwface is actually twins.
How? Who cares. After Seagal kills them both he delivers an awesome one-liner:
And then the movie ends. That’s it. And that’s how I like it — great bad guys, tons of brutal kills, and a nice bullcrap ending.
Oh one more thing, Seagal slaps around a lot of his co-stars, like for real.
I can’t believe some of this didn’t actually hurt and 1990 is right in the middle of his “Steven Seagal is a jerk” phase, so I believe he could be going a little rough.
Even one more thing again, what happened to his niece?
She gets put in the hospital after the drive-by shooting, the doctors send her to surgery and aren’t sure if she is gonna make it. Seagal has a little moment at her side before the catalyst and he storms out and grabs Keith David for ass-kicking time.
But what happened to her???
Should you watch this movie?
Yes
Did I enjoy watching this movie?
Yes
Is it a good movie?
It’s good, but it honestly is a little racist. Only a tiny bit.
On Deadly Ground
Released: FEBRUARY 1994
Director: STEVEN SEAGAL
Writers: ED HOROWITZ, ROBIN U RUSSIN
Stars: STEVEN SEAGAL, MICHAEL CAINE, JOHN C MCGINLEY, BILLY BOB THORTON
Steven Seagal is Forrest Taft, a specialist firefighter working for an oil company in Alaska.
He enters Deadly Ground when an oil rig insider reveals that they have been purchasing faulty equipment to save money.
Now targeted by corporate assassins, he is determined to prevent an ecological disaster.
He directed this one!
You can tell he’s in charge from the first 5 minutes because he is introduced as the coolest dude ever. He’s not a detective this time either! Totally out of his comfort zone.
His character is a firefighting-oil-rig-explosives-expert.
He’s the only one that can stop those out of control fires. But he is a sweet man with a conscience and knows that exploiting the environment is wrong.
Michael Caine is the evil oil CEO. They somehow got Sir Michael Caine to be in this. He is hilariously trying to get by with a Texas accent and then just gives up.
It’s terrible and supports my belief that English actors have been fooling us for decades and make careers off their accents.
Let me tell you guys something: if you haven’t figured it out by now, any time Seagal enters a bar he’s not leaving without breaking some arms.
Except this is 1994 and we’ve seen this in every one of his movies.
So he tries to mix it up a little.
Except for he nukes the fridge and the fight devolves into a ridiculous slap game.
The one that children play.
The fights are really sub-par, but it’s got a big budget so there are some great explosions.
I wonder how much carbon polluted the ecosystem after all this boom-boom happened to make the film.
Yes, that is John C. McGinley and he might be the best part of the movie.
He really makes anything he is in better. He got me through most of this movie.
He plays one of the assassins and cuts off an old man’s leg with a giant pipe cutter.
Sadly there is too much Native American spiritual elements, a very boring mythos for a movie. I don’t think bear claws and eagle guides are especially interesting.
By the time he is introduced to the Eskimos and the shaman sends him on a spirit journey, the movie commits the most offensive act: it becomes really boring.
When everything was said and done, it’s about a terrorist who breaks into an oil refinery, but first murders all the security guards.
Then he then blows it up and executes the CEO of the oil company who poses zero physical threat. Even his personal assistant is horribly burnt to death, she wasn’t even involved.
At the end, there is a sweet monologue where Seagal says he has done some research and car engines exist that can run on water, but big oil is preventing its sale.
Then a Native American says “The earth is our grandma.”
I get it, Steven Seagal is a big environmental guy.
I think most people are if you separate caring for dolphins and the earth from the carbon tax racket.
It’s great that he made a movie about something he cared about, I appreciate the passion.
He can even strangely justify killing people that work for oil companies, that’s fine with me.
But Steven, you can’t make it a boring movie. And that’s what pisses me off, this movie is boring.
The martial arts and brutal kill aspect just isn’t here.
The fighting feels like generic Seagal filler for a different movie.
I felt tricked and bored.
Should you watch this movie?
No
Did I enjoy watching this movie?
No it was boring
Is it a good movie?
No
TOP 5 STEVEN SEAGALS:
Previous Standings:
- Above The Law
- Out For Justice
- Under Siege
- TBD
- TBD
Tonight’s Update:
- Hard to Kill
- Above the Law
- Marked For Death
- Out For Justice
- 2 hours of Spongebob Squarepants
Earlier Saturday Seagals
Thank you for your time.
