Today You Die

(Credit IMDb) A former thief who is trying to go straight seeks vengeance on those who framed him.

Today You Die consists of more stock footage then I'd have liked, but considering the turds he puts out on a consistent basis these days, even stock-footage I'll take, if it has some good bits and pieces. It has a decent car chase scene, and Seagal does do some fights, only a few of them are filmed in the dark. Seagal looks a bit more motivated then usual, despite wearing a big coat, to hide his heavy baggage. Treach isn't that easy to watch though, and his chemistry with Seagal wasn't that great. The ending is a bit cheesy too. But that's Seagal these days for you.

Performances. Seagal is better then he usually is in low budget crap, but that isn't saying much. He's still lazy, and I never was fully satisfied. That being said, he's better then usual. Treach is annoying, and should stick to rapping. Mari Morrow is OK in her role as Seagal's love interest. Kevin Tighe and Nick Mancusco both good villains, do alright here. Sarah Buxton is easy on the eyes and does decent as an Agent.

Bottom line. Mediocre is even pushing it, but if this type of quality means no more stuff like Kill Switch, Attack Force, etc., count me in!. Not sure if it's worth an entire recommendation, but Seagal fans might be somewhat surprised. I kind of was.

4/10(barely)

Almost as if there was an unexpected explosion in whatever department is supposed to handle plot and character development you can almost see bits of "what might have been" scatter all over the place. Bit like the fairly realistic blood spatters from (mostly) shoulder wounds in one shoot out.

Seagal always manages to get interesting co-stars. In this case I nominate Mari Morrow.

And it gets a bit sentimental at the end. Quite touching, especially after such a spectacular explosion in the final warehouse the whole damn county would have been declared a disaster zone. All good fun.

But you can't deny you keep watching them, and part of the fun is that Seagal seems to insist on doing exactly what he feels is right. And even if it goes directly to video, how many stations carry his films?. Dammit I watched a 2005 film tonight on an Irish channel. It all means royalties.

So lets all get crazy!.

Today You Die was the 4th Seagal movie in a mini marathon I just held. Wow, I don't know where to start. He seems to mumble his lines more and more as time goes on, and the scenes between Seagal and Treach where they seem to improv are embarrassing. And what did his girlfriend's dreams have to do with anything else in the plot? I can't recommend this to anyone but the most die hard Seagal fan, and even then you are better off with his earlier work. Of the 4 films in my marathon (Submerged, Into the Sun, Foreigner and Today You Die) Today was the worst. A previous reviewer mentioned this but the usage of stock footage was quite obvious.

I may sound biased, but I don't like Steven Seagal(except for Under Siege and a couple of others) and most of the direct-to-video releases he's done. Today You Die is a pretty poor movie, however with stuff like Submerged and particularly Out for a Kill, Seagal has done worse. The photography and editing aren't as slipshod or as dull as they can be, Nick Mancuso is good and the final explosion is spectacular. Even Seagal is better than usual, however that doesn't necessarily mean he was good, in fact it was still a lazy performance but at least the lines were intelligible. The action didn't do much for me, because of the sluggish pace in general of the film, it felt unexciting, while the plot is derivative with too many plot holes to push a delivery truck through, Treech is very irritating, the script is really quite dumb in places and the soundtrack was not to my taste, too loud and overdone. All in all, a poor film but not among Seagal's worst. 3/10 Bethany Cox

The plot: A thief tries to go straight but is tricked into performing one last heist, which lands him in prison. After escaping, he recruits a sidekick and seeks his revenge.

There are just so many things wrong with Today You Die that it's the kind of movie where you just don't know where to even begin. To start with, the movie has trouble with even basic plot continuity. For example, the protagonist's wife is introduced as being psychic, having prophetic dreams, and visiting a tarot card reader. Throughout the the early part of the movie, this is an important element, but near the middle, it's completely abandoned. The movie is sloppy and lazy, but this is probably the sloppiest and laziest part of it.

Seagal seems to be pumping out as many crap movies as possible, to cash out on his fans before he retires. It's an insult to his fans, and he owes us an apology. Say what you will about Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme, but they would never abuse their fans like this.