Le Prix du sang

Recently, I was reading a review of another Steven Seagal movie, and in it the reviewer commented to the effect that it was just the same as his other movies. Watching "Driven To Kill", I got the same feeling. Oh sure, there are a few minor changes, like making Seagal a Russian (which leads to some unintentional hilarity, hearing Seagal's wheezy and pause-filled whisper doing a bogus accent.) But with the rest of the movie, you will see nothing new. Seagal is still fat, and he continues to wear heavy coats to mask his weight, and is mostly filmed from the chest up. (There is a very funny moment when we see him run for several seconds - he can barely do it.) It should probably come as no surprise that there aren't that many martial arts moments here compared to his early films, and they are rapidly edited and filled with shots of what appear to be doubles doing his work. The gun battle scenes are also equally hard to make out as well. The general production values (cinematography, set decoration, etc.) are passable, and that's about all that's positive I can say about this.

Former Russian diplomat and assassin Ruslan (Steven Seagal) is forced to reimmerse himself in the gang culture he thought he left behind when his family is attacked by his old cohorts at his daughter's wedding.

One of the first scenes of the film finds Steven Seagal seated across a table from a gorgeous babe (of course). Babe asks Steven to close his eyes. It's not as if you'd be able to tell, Seagal's face is constantly in a contorted squint. He doesn't seem to ever actually pronounce a line, just whisper his way through the film. Perhaps he thinks a Russian accent is a whisper?

"Driven to Kill" is not a driven film. For instance, why that title? Is Ruslan driven? It doesn't seem so. No one in the film seems to know exactly what it going on, not excepting the star. It is an uninspired, lackadaisical, but certainly not lazy film that makes an bizarre addition to the revenge genre.

All of the characters confuse themselves for each other until the film starts to resemble particularly runny porridge. Seagal's ex-wife and his daughter look the exact same age. The villains are all similar and none too smart but at least aren't all named "Ivan". The detectives are excruciatingly bad actors that make Steven Seagal look like Marlon Brando.

The cinematography is surprisingly decent. Overall the film doesn't outwardly look like a low-budget flick. It was surely filmed on the cheap in Canada and made to look like the United States. The action and fighting isn't terrible and kept me interested to see how our aging hero would take down the next baddie.

"Driven to Kill" is the epitome of a low-budget, fairly intriguing action movie ideal for late night viewing and late night reviewing. If you're a fan of Seagal or a fan of cheese, add it to your queue.

Not been able to see a preview before I saw this made me a little worried, but I thought, what the hell? Seagal rules. I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. The only flaw was that at times I couldn't understand Seagal. It also appeared as if he did most/all of his fighting and that was nice. It was a pretty good story. It's was your standard revenge flick. It's nice to see Seagal go after bad guys that messed with his family. It was like Urban Justice in a way. I was glad it wasn't that European package crap or conspiracy from the early 90's or 2000's. This was way better than Kill Switch and of course that vampire crap. But not as good as Pistol Whipped.

After some very mediocre work in features and STV crap I wasn't expecting anything but horror from this flick. It turns out that there is nothing like a good old violent revenge movie to get some life out of Steven Segal. This is not an amazing movie as it still has a very low budget and Segal still can't act, but at least in this one it seems as it's actually him throwing the punches and shooting the guns, which is a step up from some of his previous work. Not amazing but an entertaining ride for Segal fans.

Yes, this is another boring Steven Seagal film, with another dumb revenge plot, weak characters and other typical things in these straight to DVD films. Seagal is typical himself... with bad performance, slow, no emotions and other things. What is interesting here (in negative sense), Seagal plays a Russian. Wow! A Russian! Are you sure that you can trust Seagal to play a Russian. He didn't even sound like a Russian, he was just himself, but there was nothing that looks even closely Russian on him, he spoke Russian in some scenes, but he didn't even try to pronounce the Russian words more precisely, and when I remember... that Schwarzenegger put some effort in "Read Heat" and he sounded pretty good while speaking Russian, and he even tried as much as he can to have a Russian accent. And that's what I appreciate... But, Arnie is no actor too. Now, back to Ruslan... the fight scenes in this film are the only thing that justify everything else, meaning, the fight scenes were good and they are the only thing worth watching here, well on moments they looked funny, and they were filled with this Russian balalaika music, and that made scenes even more funny, I expected Seagal to stood up and dance to this music, having a good dancing rhythm, but not fighting rhythm. And it's also good that Seagal is using Aikido again... properly.