Rastro sangriento

Either Steven Seagal has absolutely NO self-respect or the Mob were just too damn scary for him when it came to signing the contract for this total pile of crap.

They couldn't even be bothered to come up with an good title. Instead they took Hard to Kill and Out for Justice and combined them (Hard to Justice?). But don't even think for one minute that this film is up to the standards of Seagal's golden years. You'll NEVER see anything worse than this. Well, Son of the Mask maybe.

Seagal plays an archaeologist (well, it's a change from Cop or ex- CIA) who's precious Chinese artifacts and pots are seized by the Tong (the non-threatening Chinese Syndicate baddies) and stuffed with brown sugar (or cocaine, I don't know). Big Steve stumbles upon this dastardly deed and takes off for the Uzbekistan border. A hundred baddies come out of nowhere and start firing at him.

Big Steve is promptly framed and sent to jail, where he meets a character introduced as his new sidekick but is quickly forgotten about and never seen or heard from again. What the hell was the point in this? It turns out that Steve used to be in the CIA (oh for the love of crumb cake) and was their best ghost thief (huh?) and the DEA release him for some reason and he goes home to his quiet American suburb, where the Tong blow up his wife and house.

Steve goes on a killing spree. But what helps is that every Chinaman who's neck he breaks has a one-word tattoo on his arm that when added up makes an ancient Chinese proverb that provides the right order of tiles to push in case of fire in the Tong bosses office. What? Don't look at me! I didn't write this! The bad guys don't do anything apart from sit at a long table in a poorly-lit and cold-looking room and smoke cigars while looking evil. The boss isn't even Chinese but an Ian Hislop-lookalike with bushy eyebrows. Every 10 minutes the film will jump to them (subtitles list their hobbies and interests for some strange reason!) and the boss goes 'We have to stop him, he knows too much'.

The fight scenes are horrible. What is the deal with the kung-fu monkey barber? Seriously! What is the deal with that? The computer- generated effects are the worst ever (second to Son of the Mask, nothing will beat that in terms of terribleness). I've seen more convincing stuff on a ZX Spectrum.

Seagal puts NO effort into this film. He looks incredibly bored through-out and looks like he'd rather be praying to Budda. However, you can almost see Frankie Fingers from The Mob loitering off- camera, pointing a gun at his head. I know I wouldn't show enthusiasm if that were the case.

Out for a Kill is directed by Mike Oblonglowiscz, the same amateur responsible for the equally as horrible The Foreigner. The man has NO idea how to make films and should never be allowed near a camera again. He desperately tries to mime Michael Bay (a dubious choice of inspiration) with his pointless stutter-cuts and incoherent editing which only makes the film look worse, turning it into an avalanche on top of another avalanche. It's quite possibly one of the ugliest-looking film you'll ever see. Considering some of the high-profile and veteran production members it's phenomenal they made a film so indescribably bad.

Eternal, everlasting shame on all those involved with making this trash. Utter crap of the lowest order.

The DVD is in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, showing off the ugly photography and poorly planned camera angles in all their rubbishy glory. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack also turns the films unbelievably bad sound design into pure torture for the ears. The cover also features 2 exploding helicopters. There are no helicopters in the entire film, never mind exploding ones.

I haven't seen The Foreigner but if it's the same director Michael Oblowitz, then avoid it and this film like the plague. Talk about directing/editing basics, this man has no idea of either when it comes to action films. I've liked most of Seagal's films but this is lower than the pits.

Oblowitz has no idea how to edit or direct an action film, he should go back to film school and start again. In fact Oblowitz don't bother.

A disaster for Seagal, the biggest bore of a film I've seen for a long time, to give it 1 out of 10 is being too kind.

Real Shyte.

When he finds that his Chinese artefacts are really being used to smuggle drugs across the world, archaeologist Professor Robert Burns (no, really) makes a break for the border. His colleague dies in the ensuing chase but he makes it to safety, only to framed and arrested for the very crime of drug running. The American DEA get him released and he goes back home to his wife. However the criminals who framed him, come back after him and, when they miss him, kill his wife instead. Of course what they didn't know was that the mild mannered and slightly portly Professor was once one the world's greatest thieves and a martial arts expert to boot and, when he is struck, he strikes back.

Early on in this film, Professor Burns notes that pilot "Crash" Kupper used to fill proper airplanes and that his current job of flying rubbish little passenger planes shows that his career has really taken a turn for the worse. About 90 minutes later I couldn't help wonder how many takes they had to do of that scene before they were able to get Seagal to deliver the line without the irony bringing tears to his eyes (although his "highs" were never really that high were they?) because even by his standards "Out for a Kill" is a poor film, whose unimaginative title only hints at the dreariness to come. All the clichés are present – a hero who "used to be a top etc", a shady mastermind etc etc. None of it really engaged me and the globe-trotting nature of it just didn't work at all. Usually the action makes up for all the rubbish but here it was also pretty poor; the direction of them are unimpressive and attempts at something fancy in the barber shop were really just ridiculous.

The cast can do nothing to stop the rot, in fact they are a big part of the problem. In every scene Seagal looks like someone has just woken him up and that he just wants to get this all over and done with. He mumbles his way through it, only doing well with a bit of the action here and there. Goh is equally as bad and her narration is just plain awful in terms of dialogue and delivery. Johnson doesn't have much to do and just hangs around till someone decides he isn't needed any more. The support cast are made up of Asian actors who fill space on the screen and a baddie who we know is a baddie because he spends all his time in a big room, smoking – they must have shot all his scenes in about a week.

Overall this is a poor film and even fans of Seagal will struggle to find any value in this one. The direction is messy and derivative while the actual story could only aspire to those standards. The cast clearly are not up for it one bit and Seagal looks like a man carrying a crushed spirit as he repetitively goes through the motions with a lot of mumbling and a dead look in his eyes.

Michael Oblowitz must have been stoned out of his mind and I will be avoiding movies made by him in the future. Watching this movie must be like a bad trip. The perspective is zooming in and out all the time and jumps from one location to an other so often it will make you dizzy watching. Though Seagal never was more than a martial art action hero, good OLD Seagal became a cartoon of himself trying to hide his fatness in a big leather coat, which hardly ever comes off. I think I saw him getting dressed in it when he woke up and went out of bed. Excuse me for not wanting to look at it again to make sure. Probably he became so slow that every fight scene was edited in slow motion with lots of smoke and flashes to make it look like a fight scene. He meets hoods in several parts of the world that are in a smoke filled room in the U.S.A. the next moment and back in Europe the next. At least the few women were pretty nice although they couldn't really act either.

Men have a place in their brains called the macho cortex (MC) buried in the limbic system which, when sufficiently stimulated, turns us into drooling morons with only two desires; survival and sex, not necessarily in that order. Most action flicks are designed to stimulate the MC by flooding our senses with big, ugly dudes who are bad (we don't care why) and we want to see killed or luscious babes who are good (all babes are good, even bad ones) and we want to...well, you know. This parses as Big, ugly = bad, Babe = good. All we need is some kind of Rambo-like hero with whom we can identify and, presto, we're there, vicariously getting off as we watch the hero (us) waste the bad guys while the babes swoon.

The problems with the formula in Seagal's formula action outing "Out for a Kill" are manifold. First, the hero, Seagal, doesn't fit the strong, silent type paradigm because he looks like a porky zombie on ludes. Second, the hero is married and then quickly widowed. So, now we're stuck with a porky zombie on ludes who is in mourning. Yuck! Thirdly, as Seagal trucks through a plot flatter than a saltine, there are no babes watching or waiting to drop their skivvies at the end. So, where's the prize? No respectable action hero would go to so much trouble with no hotties watching and waiting. Hottie cop Goh is waiting at the end but she's a platonic thing because she can't jump the hero since he's in mourning. Duh! Therefore, all the killing is a needless, senseless waste of time, the MC never gets engaged, and we, the men, are left with no reason to drool so boredom sets in and that's a bad thing. (C-)