Into the Sun

When the governor of Tokyo is killed in his campaign for election, the former CIA agent Travis Hunter (Steven Seagal) is assigned to find the responsible working together with the rookie FBI agent Sean (Matthew Davis). Travis was raised in Japan, has great connections with the underworld of the streets and is a master in sword and martial arts, trained by a former member of Yakuza. Travis discloses that there is a war between the old and traditional members of Yakuza and the new generation leaded by the deranged and sick Kuroda (Takao Osawa), who has associated to the Chinese Tong mobster Chen (Ken Low) in a powerful drug dealing business. When his fiancée Nayako (Kanako Yamaguchi) is brutally and cowardly murdered by one of Kuroda's men, the mission of Travis becomes a personal issue and he seeks revenge.

"Into the Sun" is the best of the recent works of Steven Seagal. The story is flawed, full of clichés, but also very entertaining. Steven Seagal does not have the same agility of his first movies, but the plot is well supported by magnificent landscapes, wonderful soundtrack and a great cast. I really have not understood why he alternates speaking in English or Japanese; there are some dialogs that the Japanese characters speak in Japanese and Travis speaks in English, in a complete mess. But in the end, I liked this film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Operação Sol Nascente" ("Operation Rising Sun")

weren't the late 80's and first half of the 90's great people? We have this guy who can't act but sure as hell kick a punch in movies with mostly no plot at all except for him kicking ass for 90 minutes long. OK, so they did have a little plot but the movies were all about Steven kicking the butts of bad guys. Steven would hit, kick, run, jump etc etc and people would get there bones broken in the nastiest ways. Who can forget the guy with the meat cleaver in "Out for Justice"? The way that was handled: pure testosterone filled ballet! Now it's the new millennium and the only decent thing our aikido hero has released was Exit Wounds (with lots of help from wire-fu, funny script, good co-stars, a good director, Steven who went to the gym etc etc). OK so Belly of the beast was decent, but not when you consider Steven had a body-double in tons of scenes.

So here is Into the sun, the latest fight fest from Steven and what does it contains:

-An openings scene which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It works for James Bond but not here

• Steven doing pinkypink with his soon-to-be-wife (lame!) About one aikido fighting the first hour of the movie (against a couple of street kids)

• The rest is sword fights to the end

• Unimaginative baddies (I miss those guys from Under Siege 1 & 2, Hard to kill etc)

• Too much uninteresting plot too little fighting.

All Steven needs is a simple plot for him to go on a one-man-rampage across a lot of different locations fighting lots of men to get to his goal... Nothing more, nothing less. That never happens in Into the Sun. Steven just goes from friendly contact to friendly contact to get some info and that's basically it. Only in the last half hour the flick turns into a revenge-story and we get to see a toned down version of Hard to kill. What was the use of getting all that info in the first hour when the baddies get taken down by Steven out for a revenge motive? Next time someone writes a script for Seagal, just kill someone he loves in the beginning or drop some terrorists in the same location he is. Then get him "a shotgun and a patrol car" and he'll do the rest.

And make sure he went to the gym before the filming starts... those really close up aikido fights are not very exciting...

Steven Seagel returns as Travis Hunter, a former CIA agent who's brought out of his retirement as a sword-smith in Tokyo to help with an investigation involving a pact between The Yakuza and The Triad.

Soon Travis is under threat and he must use his deadly skills in the martial arts and the blade in order to take down the Yakuza and the Triads who are both out to end his life.

This movie really surprised me, I'm not a huge fan of Seagel's recent efforts but I was so impressed with Belly Of The Beast that I decided to give this a try.

First off, Seagel actually looks like he wants to be in the movie, going as for as to give some effort in the acting. Te story isn't all that great and there are some very cliché moments but overall it was enough to keep my interest through out.

The action was well paced and nicely choreographed, Seagel's fight with Ken Lo being a highlight but it was good to see they didn't hold back when it came to the sword fighting as he cuts his way through various sword wielding thugs in order to get to the final showdown, there's lots of blood on offer there.

I was nice to see Seagel being backed up by a strong supporting cast, even going as far as the let the Asian actors speak their native languages instead of making them speaking very bad English, I have to say as well Seagel's Japanese was way better the his Thai in Belly Of The Beast.

To finish off I have to say I'd like to see Seagel make more movies like this in the future, it seems mink* new what he was doing when he directed this as he gave the movie a nice level of flashiness without making it look like an MTV music video.

So if Seasgel decided to make more hack and slash type movies, I'd definitely be interested.

Mr. Seagal is getting a little old for the job. He's put on a little weight too I think. So what does Into the Sun offer us that hasn't been done before. Well we get to see Seagal wield a Katina and go apes**t on a bunch of Japanese criminals, and we get to see him act in a different language, but his fluency in Japanesse has little effect on the overall quality of his performance. It's just different is all. No folks, Seagal is pretty much the same guy he was ten fifteen years earlier, only he'd getting tiresome.

With that in mind, If I am gonna recommend one film from the latter Seagal, this might be it. despite It feels a bit more epic than anything he has done in that decade, It has some nice shots, and even features a couple of Seagal's songs. He ain't too bad.

The script could do with a few less clichéd lines, and a few more one liners. Steven Seagal looks pretty bored on screen, and the signs of age are certainly taking their toll, but he ain't dead yet.

So it's well known that the movie takes place in the actual neighborhood where Seagal grew up and studied martial arts, and also that he speaks fluent Japanese, but why have Japanese terrorists that are always speaking English? Isn't it just a little off-putting that the American hero is constantly speaking Japanese but the Japanese and Chinese guys all speak broken English to each other? Of course Seagal would want to show off his Japanese, since he almost never gets a chance to do it in his movies, but if they're going to go for that authenticity, they should at least include it where it really belongs as well…

As far as a Seagal film, it's about average as far as the films he has been releasing for the last ten years or so, none of which have really been all that impressive. But I still get a great kick out of his movies, even when they're not good. If nothing else, I can even enjoy the cheesy acting and paper-thin plots, and if even those fail at least Steve is always good for smacking around some bad guys.

But in Into the Sun, other than a brief skirmish near the beginning, it's a good hour into the movie before anything happens. Before then, we get a tirelessly developing but uninteresting plot about the Chinese and Japanese versions of the Mafia and how they are developing a massive drug corporation, with Seagal entering the mix investigating the murder of a government official.

Worst of all, however, is that the movie spends so much time developing the totally unnecessary and unconvincing romantic story, in which 54-year-old Steve in his floor- length leather trench-coat falls deeply and madly in love with a tiny, dainty Japanese girl who can't be more than 22.

Needless to say, my favorite part was when he sheepishly explains to her, "You know, I've never had the best luck with women. In fact, you could probably say I haven't had any luck at all…"

What's that, he's a virgin? Is he asking her to go easy on him in the sack?

But stay tuned, at the end of the movie this impressive team of filmmakers utilize an unbelievably complex and difficult bit of cinematic trickery to make the wife disappear from Steve's grasp. I noticed this particular bit of movie magic because I did the exact same thing in a six-minute movie I made with a $250 video camera when I was taking an Intro to Film class at Fresno City College in 1998. They really spared no expense with this movie!

The other problem is the bad guys themselves. They are such tired clichés that it's impossible from frame one to take any of them seriously, particularly the leader of the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia). He's your typical, b-movie villain – slicked back hair, fishnet t- shirt, arm always slung over the chair he's slouched in and a lot of guys standing around him that jump to attention and do things for him when he snaps his fingers. Yawn.

The guy is so unimaginative and so unimpressive that he makes the movie seem longer because I'm just waiting to see him get killed at the end. Evidently, however, they knew when they were making the movie that some serious ingredients were missing, so they tried to cover up the gaps with things like the sound effects that make it sound like whenever someone gets cut with a sword they spray out a fountain of blood all over the place. Nice.

In the movie's defense, it's true that Steve does look good for his age, although he has certainly lost the hardened appeal that he had in his earliest movies like Hard to Kill and Out For Justice. At least he looks a lot better than he looked in Urban Justice, but unfortunately that's not saying a lot.

The movie is a bit of a curiosity piece because Seagal wrote and performed a lot of the music on the soundtrack, and he actually sings the song during the closing credits. It's a little disturbing to listen to, but I recommend you wait and check it out because it's not disturbing because it's so bad, it's disturbing because it's actually pretty good. Too bad the rest of the movie isn't quite as pleasantly disappointing