You don't really read many positive things about Steven Seagal, but we must give
the devil his due. The man has an excellent work ethic. He churns out a lot of
movies, and his characters are not the kind of roles where he can memorize five
lines, work one day, then leave. He is generally onscreen for virtually the
entire running time, and often combines his acting with producing and writing
credits, as he does here.
In this one he plays, as is his wont, an ex-supercop. It's the typical Seagal
set-up. While saving the world from destruction and maintaining the honor of his
profession, the Weighty Warrior inevitably comes into conflict with those whose
ethical standards are less evolved than his own, a group of people who taken
together would form a rather lengthy list encompassing Mother Theresa and
Buddha. The official Seagal character considers Gandhi and Jesus to be corrupt
slimeballs. Rather than compromise his sense of justice, he must then resign,
get fired, or be placed
on disability leave on some lame pretext. ("You can't save the world with that
hangnail.") This, of course, increases his sense of resigned world-weariness up
to approximately the Philip Marlowe level, but also fortunately frees him up to
take on exotic special assignments which require his special blend of
unimpeachable integrity, ass-kicking ability and multiple chins.
This time, however, there is a twist. He learns to experience the new economic
reality alongside the rest of us. He is unemployed for nearly 35 seconds! Yup,
his cell phone rings and he actually gets an incredibly lucrative job offer from
an old friend while he is still talking to his police supervisor about being placed on
his usual phony-baloney disability leave. But those 35 seconds of unemployment were clearly the most
traumatic 35 seconds of his life, and that hardship really helped to build his
character.
Anyway, he moseys down to Texas at the behest of his old chum, and ends up doing his
usual stuff: helping old ladies cross the street, standing up for minorities,
defending the weak and innocent, and helping the poor, the tired, and the
huddled masses as they strive to breathe free. Of course, he does all this while
kicking the redneck asses of an
enormous number of white bullies and no-goodniks. As the body count mounts, he
eventually resolves the problems he has been hired to combat, mainly by the
process of elimination, since he kills every other white anglo guy in San Antonio.
The film has an odd ending. There is a long gun battle between the heavily armed
evildoers and Seagal's rag-team team of Mexicans with Civil War rifles. Seagal wins,
of course. And then that's it. The film ends. No discussion, no wrap-up,
no wise words, no post-mortem of any kind. Just a shoot-out followed by closing
credits.
The big guy has 34 films on his "sort by ratings" page at IMDb, and
this is rated 7th highest (6th among the true Seagal movies). I've
seen nearly all of his films, and I'd place it a bit lower than that,
probably near the middle, although I might have been more favorably
disposed if it had come up with some kind of satisfying ending. Given
that Seagal is his own sub-genre, those ratings mean that this film is
watchable for his fan base.
