Code of Honor

CODE OF HONOR is the very latest in a series of star action vehicles for bloated and charisma-free Steven Seagal, the former great who has been making bad film after bad film for just under twenty years now. Bizarrely, this one's not been shot in Eastern Europe but Utah for a change, although ironically it's even worse than Seagal's previous Romanian and Bulgarian adventures.

The story sees Seagal as a high-tech vigilante who goes around taking down drug dealers and criminals with his sniper rifle. The police are on the case and so are various bad guys who want to take revenge for the slayings. What quickly becomes apparent is that Seagal is nothing more than a supporting player in his own movie. He gets little screen time and just one or two fight scenes which are laughably poor.

The film has plenty of cheesy CGI blood which looks even more ridiculous than that we saw in THE EXPENDABLES. Despite the violence it's a real bore to sit through with barely any plot, a distinct lack of characterisation, and irrelevant sub-plots. Craig Sheffer and James Russo are two of the tired looking actors who show up to pick up their pay and keep their heads down. The ridiculous climax is particularly poorly handled and leaves the viewer thinking "is that it?".

An American action thriller; A story about a former special-ops operative who turns vigilante after the drive-by killing of his wife and son. His former protege, an FBI agent, tries to find his vigilante friend before the police or a maniacal mobster are able to. This is an old-school styled action thriller set in Salt Lake City. The central theme is, what happens if a vigilante begins to destroy all the crime lords and murderers which plague a district. How far could he go before a people's champion becomes too grey for the general public'? Gratuitous for its violence, nudity and sleaze scenes, the film is also poorly acted in parts with ham-fisted exposition dialogue which is delivered by the supporting players. Clearly, it is meant as a Seagal vehicle so it's a pity he doesn't speak for 47 mins. Some scenes look fake with poor exection of CGI too. There's just nothing compelling about the story and it ends up with a diabolical twist at the end. Nevertheless, the film features a terrific explosion in one scene and there is plenty of action and aikido skills on show, as you might expect. All in all, there are no characters with significant screen time to root for, as government, police, and news media are all painted in a bad light.

They do not need to worry. Not only because Steven Seagals character won't be after them (he's hunting criminals you see?), but also because this just tries to mash a couple of things and take a decent idea and make something out of it. I'd say it doesn't succeed, but at least it doesn't shy away from showing the violence behind it all (even if most of the blood, if not all is CGI).

Youz also get some nudity (a friend of mine told me that Steven Seagal movies nowadays have at least one scene shot in a strip club, haven't checked if that's accurate but wouldn't be surprised at all) if that floats your boat. And a story of sorts of someone being after a guy, although they have the same goal and ... well who am I kidding, you're not going to watch this because of a plot. Even when it sounds decent and made me reconsider my own recent ban on Seagal movies and watch this. He did worse, but if you're not a fan, you probably should just stay away ...

Horrible acting, editing, cgi and everything else. Trash

I know what your thinking. It's a Seagal movie so it has to be god awful, right? Well the concept of the movie was actually pretty cleaver. Most of the plot had to do with Seagal playing a punisher- like character, a soldier who while was overseas thought his family would be safe, but they end up getting killed in a gang related shooting. His head snaps and he begins a vigilante crusade to kill organize crime.

One of the things that makes this an...interesting Seagal picture is that, technically Seagal is playing the Antagonist. He thinks he's doing the right thing, but the cops this movie really focus on are assigned to take him down.

That's another reason why this could have been a good Seagal movie, he's barely in it. Most of Seagal's scenes look like they were inserted after the movie was finished. It was like the filmmakers made a bad movie and thought they could make it better by finding the money to hire Seagal, film him saying some corny stuff and doing his once bad ass but now cheesy Akido movies, and edit it into the rest of the movie.

Code of Honor could have done for Seagal what JVCD did for Van Damme (not that it did so much), but unfortunately the film making looked very amateurish even for a Straight-to-Video film. It is a Seagal film, but I do expect better quality in sound and visual effect than what I got.

Even though you can see it coming before it does, the movie has a pretty decent plot twist that made it interesting, but it does not sit well because of all the really bad acting (and I'm not even talking about Seagal)

It had potential, but overall it's not even worth it to watch to make fun of Steven Seagal. Skip it.