True Justice

Steven Seagal had so much fun being a real fake cop on "Lawman", he became a fake fake cop on "True Justice". Steven Seagal plays Steven Seagal's version of Steven Seagal. He's the smartest guy in the room, the sexiest man in America, the best martial artist in the world. Of course, he is. He's Steven Seagal! He's a Seattle cop who talks like he's from New Orleans, looks like he's from Hollywood, and moves like he's from "Zombieland". He leads a special team called the Central Casting Squad. They look up to him for some reason while he mumbles orders at them. In his spare time, he practices waving his samurai sword around. He so respects the way of the samurai that he got his hair cut like "Samurai Jack". Every episode is written by Steven Seagal's favorite writer: Steven Seagal. Oh, and one of the squad members has a droopy eye and is played by an actor credited as "Big Sleeps". Mr. Sleeps is the third-best actor to play a droopy-eyed detective on TV. (#1 is Forest Whitaker, #2 is Droopy Dog). If you love Steven Seagal - and how could you not? - you'll love this show.

Steven Seagal is solely responsible for this. Only Steven Seagal could come up with something this terrible. Only Steven Seagal could write, produce, direct and star in something this horrible. Plots are unintelligible. Dialogue is down there with the worst of Bollywood. The acting however, does hold up to my fifth grader's Christmas play. There is absolutely no redeeming quality to this no good, very bad collection of garbage. Not even Steven Seagal's hair transplant can save it.

1 - If you like watching Seagal beat up bad guys with little effort, grab your snacks and beverages to watch a bunch of those scenes per episode. If you want to see him speak clearly or show any emotional range, fuggeddaboutit.

2 - The plots are almost comically convoluted, with more double-crosses and hidden agendas than one should have to endure.

3 - Be prepared for a whole lotta stupid. Characters regularly fire far more shots without reloading than their weapons could hold. Outgunned protagonists routinely waste ammo by firing multiple shots when conserving bullets is vital. Good guys with pistols are constantly facing machine guns, and rarely bringing the weapons needed to level the playing field. After downing a foe, they frequently fail to finish obviously necessary kills, or check the fallen bodies to be sure they're no longer a threat. Or pick up their weapons for much-needed firepower.

3 - More stupidity - When time is short and thugs are all over the place, Seagal wastes time and effort by beating guys up slowly rather than dispatching them efficiently to help the rest of his team with the rest of the minions.

4 - Several members of his team, including some who are actually enjoyable to watch, die along the way. The overall story doesn't really require that - and some occur off-camera, so they don't even get the poignant death scene they deserve. That raises questions as to the reason. Availability of cheaper replacements? Fed up with Seagal's ego running everything to his tastes? Better offers for other productions? Seagal creating turnover so viewers will stay more bonded with him than with the better actors around him?

5 - This one's a biggie. Season One sets up a huge cabal of bad guys with a nuclear threat, plus a personal revenge quest up their food chain of evil for Season Two. Even with the subsequent 2012 movie/extended episode, they don't finish the tasks!!!! The thing ends as if they were planning another installment that no one was interesting in funding. Or filming. Or committing air time for. If you crave closure, spend your time on another product.

I didn't have the chance to watch the TV series when it was on TV, so I bought it on DVD. First of all, the cast whether it concerns the first or the second season is solid and the acting is excellent. I have also discovered some Canadian as well as American actors and actress that I have never heard of before. The series tells the story in the first season about Elijah Kane former CIA and black ops agent who is now a member of the SIU (special intervention unit) of the Seattle PD.His team is composed of Mason, Radner, Juliet and Sarah who among the episodes catch and kill bad guys (drug dealers, Nazis, gang members, mafiosis, scum).Nicolai, one of the guys Kane caught will be the trigger of the attack on Kane's precinct at the end of the season 1 killing two of his best friends and partners Juliet and Radner.At the beginning of the season 2, we see Kane bury his friends and retiring from the police, in order to go undercover for the CIA and work with Marcus Mitchell, who will later be proved to be a sell out and to have betrayed Kane.He forms a new team with Sarah, Simms, Garcia and Finch with the help of his friend Castillo who recruited the last two members for him. Mason will get killed in the beginning of season2 by the ghost. Over the episodes in season 2, Kane kills the cuts outs and the expendables who might threaten him and his team, he also tracks who was at the head on the hit of his older team and discovers that Marcus was compromised and deals with another former army man called Lynch who wanted to steal a nuclear device.The end of the season 2 is sad because Castillo, one of Kane's oldest friends is critically wounded, Simms and Sarah wounded too, Garcia and the Russian female operative got arrested.And Kane says in his talkie walkie: "Operation went sideways. We got compromised." The fighting scenes are quite spectacular and for his age, Steven Seagal is in great shape, though his fighting style is very different from the one used by Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li but it is always enjoyable to see. The shooting scenes are also well done. There is not a single shooting and killing bad guys scene where Steven Seagal hasn't a 1911 pistol. I think this series deserves a second chance because it has a lot of potential and it is completely different. Watching on DVD is what I can recommend.

13 users reviewed True Justice, which is an awful number. The average number of people reviewing is a mess in general and it just shows their indifference. So sad. Anything below 150-200 is users faults. They just don't care and that's a terrible mentality to have.

On True Justice_ Well nothing special to add besides some good scenes, some nice martial arts, mainly Aikido, beautiful cinematography and overall average to good soundtrack.

I won't be harsh on the script / storyline (very average) because as creator and one of the producers, that is not Steven Seagal's job to come up with something shiny. It's like B-style direct-to-video summed up in a series.

It just should have had less shooting and more Aikido moves, which are very instructive. On a side note, Steven Seagal should really shed some 60-70 pounds. He just let go of his fitness a long time ago. A shame for someone who was so lean and alert.

True Justice is just a series to enjoy if you are a Steven Seagal fan, which I am and I'm sure many of you, out there, are too.