Steven Seagal embarrasses himself again

Belly of the Beast (2003)
Starring: Steven Seagal, Byron Mann, Monica Lo, Tom Wu, and Sara Malakul Lane
Director: Tony Ching
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

One-time CIA operative Jake Hopper (Seagal) travels to Thailand to rescue his daughter (Lane) who is being held for ransom by militants. He runs head-long into intrigues involving rogue military officers, corrupt CIA agents, and an evil sorcerer.

"Belly of the Beast" is a paint-by-numbers action flick that borrows and steals from any number of superior films. I'm not sure there's a single frame in it that isn't cribbed from somewhere, except perhaps the bit where a monastery full of Buddhist monks get together to unite their spiritual force and attempt to slay the evil Thai voodoo priest who is targeting their good buddy Jake Hooper with his voodoo dolls and chants. (It also happens to be one of the dumber moments in the movie. I know Buddhism is a big tent, but does it really have room for an entire monastery of monks who violate one of the most basic preciepts of Buddhism, that being "you will not take a human life"?)

Being unoriginal isn't necessarily bad. The recent hit movie "Machete"--which features Steven Seagal in a supporting role as the main villain--owes everything to 1970s blacksploitation films, and it's a great deal of fun. Sometimes, turning off the brain and just watching things explode isn't all that bad.

"Belly of the Beast" had the potential to be a movie like that, but that potential is sapped away by the presence of a weak, overweight, and generally unhealthly looking Steven Seagal. The fact that he is past his physical prime and out of shape--perhaps even ill--is made all the more obvious by the scenes he shares with sidekick Byron Mann. Mann is the young, physically fit actor that Seagal USED to be twenty years ago, and Mann doesn't need stand-ins and creative camera angles to make it look like he is doing his fight scenes, because he actually is doing his fight scenes.


Actually, this film would have been a far-sight more watchable if Mann had been the hero on a quest to free his kidnapped daughter and Seagal being the sidekick recruited out of retirement in a Buddhist monastery. Mann in the lead and Seagal as the sidekick would have fixed this film's worst problems. It might even have made the plot line with the barmaid falling head-over-heels in love with the dashing hero who rescues her believable. (Of course, the different casting would not have allowed broken down old fat guys like me to imagine us in Steven Seagal's shoes... "wow, if he can get a hot chick, then so can I!" Nor would we have been treated to teenaged girls in short-shorts and bikini tops, as any daugther Mann's character might have would be entirely too young for such displays. But I think it would have been a fair trade-off to avoid yet another sad spectacle of Steven Seagal humiliating himself.)

With a new decade upon us, I think maybe that Steven Seagal has FINALLY taken the hard look at himself and his career that he should have taken back in 2000. The role his plays in "Machete" is far more suitable for his physical condition and appearance these days--even if he had to play at being the bad-ass there, too. Maybe now, he will start settling into supporting roles and stop making those of us who liked his films in the early 1990s look upon him with pity.

Corpulent Seagal faces 'Black Dawn'

Black Dawn (aka "The Foreigner 2") (2005)
Starring: Steven Seagal, Tamara Davies, Nicholas Davidoff, and Timothy Carhart
Director: Alexander Gruszynski
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When CIA agent Amanda Stuart (Davies) sees her supposedly dead mentor Jonathan Cold (Seagal) show up with a armsdealer meeting with a crazed Muslim rebel (Davidoff), she knows something very big and very bad is coming down. But little did she know that soon she and Jonathan would be battling both terrorists and renegade CIA agents bent on detonating a nuke in downtown Los Angeles.


"Black Dawn" is absolutely, totally predictable; it's decently acted, with okay stunts, but there's nothing you haven't seen done better elsewhere. What's more, the cast is too small for there to ever be any doubt as to the identitiy of the traitor within the CIA. Then, to add insult to injury, we don't even get treated to decent fight scenes.

I don't know if Seagal is too old or too fat (and I know I'm not one to criticize someone for packing on the pounds come middle-age... I've turned into a true porker over the past five years) or if he may have been sick during the two-week schedule I assume this cheap quickie must have had, but not only were all three of the potential fight scenes over virtually before they started, they were done using stand-ins!

Yes, iconic Akido tough guy Seagal--the guy who in an interview on the DVD of "Black Dawn" talks about how he was in hundreds of fights before he lost one--doesn't do a single one of his fight scenes in this film. In fact, the stand-ins aren't built like Seagal (one doesn't even have similar hair, and we're treated to several seconds of the back of his head!) and there doesn't even seem to be an attempt to match the style he used when he DID do his own fight scenes.

I wonder if "Black Dawn" spells the end of Seagal's career. He's not really much of an actor, and if he can't do his own fight scenes, what's left? Maybe it's time for him to move behind the cameras and let others star in films that he produces? (On the other hand, he could well have been sick. There are several scenes where he seems to be carrying himself strangely, particularly with the way he crosses his arms.)

Sheesh... I seem to be going on about Seagal... but that's because I ran out of things to say about the movie in the second paragraph, and because I think he's done some pretty good action flicks (like "Hard to Kill", "Under Seige", "Half Past Dead" and even "The Foreigner"), and it's a bit sad to see him go out on such a pathetic note, if that is indeed what's happening.

If you want to see a fairly generic, relatively low-budget action flick with some sorry blue-screen shots, you want to pick up "Black Dawn." If you're looking for a good Steven Seagal flick, stay away from this one. You'll be very dissapointed.

Jean-Claude hits the border in 'The Shepherd'

The Shepherd (aka "Border Patrol") (2007)
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Gary McDonald, Natalie Robb, Scott Adkins, and Stephen Lord
Director: Isaac Florentine
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Jack (Van Damme), a New Orleans cop transplanted to New Mexico and working as a border patrol agent runs headlong into a group of former American Special Forces who have turned to crime and used extreme violence and connections gained in Afghanistan to take control of the drug operations in the area.


"The Shepherd" is a rarity among films starring the big action heroes of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Steven Seagal and Wesley Snipes: This direct-to-DVD action flick is every bit as good as the movies Jean-Claude Van Damme starred in when he was packing them into the multiplexes. Where Wesley Snipes has degenerated to the point where he's a self-parody and Steven Seagal has long gone beyond being an obect of pity to someone who should be ashamed to show his face anywhere, yet along appear in movies, Van Damme appears to still be able to choose good projects to be involved with.

While the film's bad guys are somewhat bland and not terribly smart (how smart can someone be who allies themselves with Afghan drug lords and doesn't take steps to squirrel money away if things go sour?) and the director is a bit too in love with slow-motion scenes (to the point of an obession that almost ruins the film's climax), the script features some neat action and decent martial arts fights scenes, is humorous where it needs to be and deadly serious when appropriate, and moves along at a pace fast enough that you don't have time to think about some of the stupider moments in the film. (The exception being when Jack is tossed in a Mexican prison and forced to participate in an extreme fighting bout.)

All-in-all, Jean-Claude Van Damme's career may have suffered a downturn, but he is still an action star who, like Jackie Chan, is aging gracefully. If you enjoyed him in films like "Hard Target", "Double Impact", or even "Sudden Death", you'll feel a warm wave of nostalgia wash over you as watch this film and discover that the Lionheated-one still has some kick in him!

One of Seagal's best in years is still weak

Urban Justice (aka "Renegade Justice") (2007)
Starring: Steven Seagal, Eddie Griffin, Carmen Serano, and Kirk B.R. Woller
Director: Don E. FauntLeroy
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A violent man with a mysterious past, Simon Ballester (Seagal), moves into the worst area of Los Angeles' gang dominated neighborhoods so he can locate and kill the gangbangers who gunned down his police officer son. As he investigates (kicking copious ass as he goes), he discovers the truth about his son's death was far more than just another random gang shooting.


"Urban Justice" is one of the Steven Seagal's better movies in recent years. He's playing a character whose background and style is suitable to his age and bulk; he's working with a director, fight choreographer, and cinematographer who understand how to set up a scene so it looks like Seagal is actually doing some martial arts-so we avoid the embarrasingly obvious stunt doubles who have made him seem to laughable in recent years; and the script gives him some fairly decent lines to deliver... the way Simon Ballester so calmly and good-humoredly discusses death and violence is both funny and chilling.

However, Seagal's lines and the way fight scenes are filmed are just about the only decent thing about the flickhow to shoot a scene. Everything else is Standard Issue Direct-to-DVD Low-Budget Action Film Cliches, with the villains being of a kind we've so many times before they are uninteresting even after the scope of their evil ways has been revealed. The film also suffers from a problem all-too-common in one written by writers who are lazy or of limited talent--every character sounds like every other character, a grave sin in film-writing where characters are defined to a degree by what they say and how they say it. To make matters worse, the writers here also seemed to be shooting for some sort of record for how many times the word "fuck" was used in a single screenplay. I've no doubt that many people are so inarticulate that they say things like "I'm gonna fuck that fuckin' fuck the fuck up!", but to have an entire city full of them gets tiresome. And it dragged the movie down from a rating of 4 to a rating of 5.

If a little more effort had been put into developing the script's story and giving the actors better lines to say, this film could have risen to the level of the projects Seagal did in his glory days--the director and photgrapher certainly did great jobs, and Segal was better here than he's been in a while.

Maybe, just maybe, he's done embarrassing himself, and we can start enjoying his movies again