Into the Sun (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Into the Sun is the latest in Steven Seagal's seemingly infinite series of straight-to-vid action pictures in which he works for or used to work for the CIA, loses one or more loved ones in some way, and incorporates stylized Asian fighting techniques into his revenge and/or rescue.

IMDb says he has made nine pictures in the new millennium, and this one is ranked in the top half.

1. (5.29) - Exit Wounds (2001)
2. (4.50) - Clementine (2004)
3. (4.22) - Belly of the Beast (2003)
4. (4.21) - Into the Sun (2005)
5. (3.91) - Half Past Dead (2002)
6. (3.53) - Out of Reach (2004)
7. (3.34) - Ticker (2001)
8. (3.27) - The Foreigner (2003)
9. (3.09) - Out for a Kill (2003)

I have not seen Clementine but amazingly, I have seen all of the others, and I'd say that IMDb ranking gives a fair picture. Into the Sun is not as good as Exit Wounds, but is very comparable to Belly of the Beast in many ways, and is a better film than the others on the list. I was ready to write Big Steve off in mid-2003, but Seagal continues to make a pretty decent little comeback after his back-to-back 2003 disasters with director Hounddog Oblowitz (the two lowest rated films above).

There are some reasons why the Bulky Battler's career is recovering:

1. Belly of the Beast and Into the Sun take place in Asia. Seagal is genuinely interested in Asian cultures and languages, as well as their fighting styles, so he brings much more passion and personal interest to the Asian films than he does to his adventures in Eastern Europe.

2. Seagal is taking a bigger role in the production of these films. He received writing credits for Belly of the Beast and Into the Sun. That doesn't mean that he sat down and wrote the screenplays, but he did get sufficiently involved to create a situation and a storyline that was appropriate for him, thus allowing him to do what he does best. On the other hand, Seagal may have overdone the hands-on approach a bit for Into the Sun. It seems that Steve the Beefy Battler and Steve the Weighty Writer were also joined by Steve the Stout Singer and Steve the Copious Composer in this film. Yup, no kidding - Seagal actually wrote and performed four songs on the soundtrack!

3. He is doing the kinds of fight scenes which obviate the need for a body double. By keeping the action restricted to close hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, Seagal is able to do all the work, so the scenes can flow naturally, and the director can do his job. Big Steve still has fast hands, and he looks mighty impressive with those swords. In some of the earlier films, with more full-body fighting and footwork, the transitions between the Pudgy Paladin and his stand-in were clumsy, or there were too many blue-screen tricks, and the fight scenes flowed strangely, stilted by the fact that "Seagal's" head had to be missing from some takes, or that Seagal and the bad guy were not actually in the room together!

4. He may even have dropped a few pounds. His chin count is definitely down to the low single figures. As much as I hate to lose so much of my Seagal schtick, I have to admit that the big fella is not as big. Seagal definitely looks trimmer and moves better than he did a couple of years ago.

5. Production values are improving. This film is reputed to have cost $20 million, and that may be so, although I have no idea how one may recover such an amount with a straight-to-video release. There is, for example, an action scene with six elephants and a helicopter, and there are also lots of dizzying helicopter shots of Tokyo. It does not look cheap, and the Tokyo street scenes are gorgeous.

So my hat is off to the Chubby Commando for grabbing his career by the horns and taking personal control of it. I don't know if he's going to make it back into theatrical releases, but the quality of his video offerings is definitely on the rise. If you like his brand of Asian gangster pictures, this is a pretty decent one.

Not that there aren't some good things to make fun of:

There's continuity, for example. These images are actually cropped from adjacent frames in the film. Notice any problem?

If the director had cut away to a picture of Seagal (the author of the letter) staring off into the middle distance, then cut back to Atherton here, I might never have noticed, but ... adjoining frames? How could I miss it? I know that both characters worked for the CIA. Maybe the message was written in disappearing ink. On the other hand, in that case I'm not sure why Atherton kept reading from it after it disappeared!

And then there's the dialogue. Check this shit out ...

Ten thousand dollars in Tokyo won't buy them a decent steak dinner.

Looks cool. May have happened in another film. Not in this one.

The colorful scene on the right might have made a cool cover for THIS film's DVD, especially since the director went to the trouble of getting it all framed and symmetrical.

The regular and special CIA agents were not able to figure this out. I guess they figured that since Kuroda carted fish around in a truck marked with his name and a fish symbol, he would cart heroin around in a truck marked with his name and a poppy. Those foolish Westerners! Will they never understand the subtlety of the Asian mind?

Luckily, the cultural virgins were able to call in the Stout Swordsman, a certain pony-tailed super special agent who grew up in Tokyo, and the big man duped it all out with his intimate knowledge of Asian cultures.

Of course, before the Fleshy Fencer could bring the baddies to justice, they had killed his sensei, his fiancée, and his partner, but ... well ... those are the sacrifices one must make for straight-to-video honor.