Cartels

What more can be said at this point? Steven Seagal, appearing slow as a sloth in the action scenes he's in, is cast in another hackneyed mess of a movie. Here he portrays a top DEA agent trying to get to the bottom of a botched U.S. Marshal protection plan for an Eastern European drug cartel boss, who was supposed to be transported to America, from Romania, to testify against his crime family.

As you might expect lots and lots of bloody carnage either with guns or martial arts sequences. The movie is very drawn out, as well, and by the time it ended I had zero interest in how it all turned out.

... while others in this age are already in a nursing home of their choice or enjoying some beers in their local dive bar, another great Sensei Seagull documentary is on the way. We are truly blessed. /cynism OK, guys and girls, nothing to see here, move on. It's just another lame direct to DVD movie of an former actor who recently is just moving from chair to chair. If you want to see something good and really interesting stare at a wall and watch some paint dry. Simple as that! This movie is so bad it's not even worth watching it for free! You have been warned! Don't do it! Just don't! You know how hard it is top write a review consisting of ten lines of text, when you can say everything of this movie in one word? Guess the word, it starts with "S" and ends with "hit". Enough said.

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)

http://cinemagardens.com

I just watched Killing Salazar (Cartels)

The long fall from grace for Seagal continues. Since 2003, he has appeared in almost 30 STV movies. That's two dozen more than the 10 pictures from 1988-2002 that were box office hits. In the last decade, things have grown worse for what is left of his fan base, as he is now a supporting player (some times not even that) in his own movies. That's the case, once again, in this tripe, but it was strangely enjoyable tripe. I can't quite put my finger on why I found it semi enjoyable, I think it was because of Luke Goss, he was the best actor in it and i enjoyed his performance.

It looked like it had the biggest budget for a movie featuring Seagal for a long time, but for me Seagal was the weak point of the movie, he is a constant distraction every time he comes on screen with his bloated face and jet black hair and goatee. There were times he didn't even look like he was putting the effort in to realistically hold and fire a gun, let alone hit anything.

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.