Cartels

An American action thriller; A story about a U. S. Marshal and his team who are flown to Romania with orders to guard a billionaire Russian drug kingpin called Salazar who has turned informer. An American agent will stop at nothing to root out the mole who compromised his operation. Keoni Waxman directs this explosive thriller and handles the action sequences with reasonable proficiency. Waxman has become the go-to man for Seagal who has improved the quality of his films in recent years. However, Seagal gives a mostly subdued supporting performance and cuts a tired figure at times. All in all, a passable action film but the script is marred by its over-use of profanities.

Steven Seagal has done some good, or at least watchable, films. Particularly 'Under Siege'. He has also done a lot of mediocre and less films, indicative of laziness and that Seagal was well past his sell by date, and a good deal of them are even very bad.

'Killing Salazar' is one of the very bad ones, with exactly the same time as 'Contract to Kill' except not quite as bad. Awful even, and for me if ranking Seagal's filmography from best to worst it would be towards the bottom. Did not expect much, but watched it because Seagal has shown signs that he can be halfway decent and as said not all his films are bad. Also do appreciate the action genre and there are good films out there in the genre, classics even. 'Killing Salazar' is far from that, more closer to a waste of time that shows little signs of trying.

Seagal himself, in a role that is not a lead but more an extended cameo, gives another lazy and wooden performance that shows that he was not interested and wanted to be somewhere else. His reading-from-an-autocue-like and robotic line delivery in particular betrays that. The rest of the cast are just as poor though in all fairness have little to work with and over-compensate.

The characters are ones we know very little about and don't care what happens to happen, so unengaging and one-dimensional they are. The dialogue is risible, with a lot of cheesiness, awkwardness and far too much talk delivered with little emotion or momentum and bordering on the near-incomprehensible.

Its excessively talky nature affects severely the pacing, which never comes to life. There is no urgency, let alone tension, intrigue or suspense. The action doesn't feature enough in comparison and suffer from pedestrian choreography and laughably bad editing. The story is by-the-numbers, dull and not always easy to follow.

Direction is flat and ill-at ease, while the sound/soundtrack are one-note and obvious as well as poorly recorded and the whole film looks cheap. And it's not just the editing, the slapdash effects and drab photography.

Overall, a mess in every single way. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Once more big old Seagal makes more of a cameo appearance in this movie as---well, does it really matter who he played? It's basically Steven Seagal. He does not have that much range to him.

Anyway, he's interrogating Luke Goss who plays an army man on a special ops team, that screwed up their mission. I always felt that Luke Goss was somewhat of a poor man's Jason Statham, but I only think that way cause he took over the Rebooted Death Race Franchise. In this movie he tells Seagal the mission in flash backs that remind me of Die Hard as the whole thing takes place in a Hotel in Romania where the bad guys take over and Goss has to sneak around them to complete his mission, which is grading the head of a Cartel from people who want to kill him after he flipped on them.

The strange thing is, despite Luke Goss' character being set up as the main protagonist, it's not his name that comes 1st in the credits (Or rather second after the extreme cameo Seagal). It's some guy named Georges St-Pierre. He does not look familiar, but I'm guessing he's a MMA fighter. My guess is based on the fact that he has that cauliflower ear thing that Randy Couture has. Wonder if you get that ear and they force you to retire and become an actor? I hope not, and I hope he's a better MMA fighter than he is an action hero.

Speaking of action, that's the real reason we go see a movie Seagal's big head would be the center of on a poster right? Well the action is mediocre. Cartels is more of a crime mystery movie as the players try to figure out a tangle web of people double crossing each other. This leaves the filmmakers trying to make something that looks suspenseful but does not have that much action to it. But unlike a lot of movies I've seen recently were Seagal is given a fat check so we can watch his fat ass sit around for ten minutes trying to sound cool, he actually does get up and puts down a few moves, like the fight he has with Georges St-Pierre, which becomes one of the rare moments when someone is able to put Seagal on the floor (or rather the stuntman, in fact I would not be surprise if Seagal did not even know that his character showed a moment of weakness until the film came out). Plus,there was this really neat action sequence that had a lot of gun play inter-cut with a lot of fight scenes in which the good guys had one on one battles with the bad guys.

It's not the best movie (far from it) but I still get a kick from watching Seagal slur thorough lines wishing he was Brando and repeating the same moves over and over again that he's been doing since he gain the pot belly, but I would skip it unless you're that big a fan of Seagal (or just like making fun of him)

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Bad bad bad ridiculous over acted just pathetic Don't really know how I watched more than 10 min as per someone mentioned in another review. Well bye bye

The main character in this ruins it with how boring he is. This story had a lot of potential but we get this Johnny Sins tooth pick looking soldier who you couldn't care less about which just like the movie before it Steven Seagal was in called "The perfect weapon (2006)" I think it was the main character of this that made the story boring where I couldn't wait for it to finish. Though the ending has a nice twist and the possibility of a sequel it's just dull.

There are some pretty good fight scenes, the bad guy is established pretty well but if you don't care for the main character of a story why even bother. Would I watch this again? no but I've seen worst movies with budgets 2x (minimum) higher.