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Another year, another Seagal movie...

...but wait, haven't we seen this before? Seagal as a former government-super-secret-special-something-something taking on the entire world by his merry lonesome? Yep. And haven't we seen that since the 1980's? Indeed we have! "Contract to Kill" offers nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing to the genre, and nothing that Steven Seagal haven't already done to the brink of pointlessness in one of the endless heap of movies similar to this one that he has notched on his black belt.

It used to be fun to watch Steven Seagal back in the 1980's and 1990's, but it has progressively just become more and more tiresome to watch his movies, as they are all exactly the same, year after year. It is time to branch out and try a new approach.

However, it was sort of embarrassing to witness Seagal in this movie, as he seemed like a beached whale fighting to survive as he waddled his way through scripted fighting and stuttering dialogue.

I managed to survive for about 50 minutes into "Contract to Kill", before I just simply lost the will to go on. I got up and just gave up on the movie. It offered nothing new to the genre, nor nothing new to the Seagal repertoire.

If you have seen any single one of the myriad of Steven Seagal movies in the past, then you have essentially already seen this movie as well. Trust me.

The characters in the movie were so generic that it was just amazing. They could be cut out of this movie and pasted directly into any other Seagal movie and they would fit right in. So don't get your hopes up for anything that even remotely resembles character development and progression.

This was nowhere near being anywhere near the usual entertainment, albeit its overwhelming generic entertainment, that Seagal usually delivers, and I have no intention of returning to finish the rest of the movie, because I already know exactly what will happen.

"Contract to Kill" was a wide swing and a wide miss, even for the teddy bear of action movies Steven Seagal.

Anyone claiming that this is a good movie should have their head examined. It's obvious and clear as day that Steven Seagal as an 'action star' is over... And it's been over for more than a decade. He is far too fat and old to continue making these straight to video trash movies. Wearing the same glasses in every single movie and the same suit to try and hide his extremely obese frame, (and it's not working) the fight scenes which involve Seagal are a joke. So much editing which translate to the fact the man cannot even raise his hands properly anymore. It's time for him to give this up and go on an Atkins diet. If I could give this 'movie' -10 rating, I would.

Despite Steven Seagal having made a ton of movies over the decades, this movie is the first of his I've ever seen. And, I have a suggestion that you will likely find helpful....use the closed captions if you see it on DVD or Netflix. Seagal is a mumbly actor...and I had to struggle to understand all of his dialog. This is NOT an attack on him...just an observation from a middle-aged guy who is a bit hard of hearing. But now that I think about it...his delivery is a bit annoying and it was simply terrible.

The plot to "Contract to Kill" seemed both confusing and filled with a lot of cliches. Seagal plays an ex-CIA/DEA agent who assembles a team of three to take down an entire terrorist scheme! It seems that another ex-CIA guy is planning on activating a bunch of terrorist cells in the USA and he's working with drug cartels to bring it off. Whatever....it just seems like a pretect to do a whole lot of shooting, killing and bone-breaking...all during which Seagal somehow doesn't emote at all and mumbles. Particularly memorable is the long dialog with the bossman before the final boss battle....where he just talks and talks and talks. I also loved how Seagal would drive his car down twisty roads in a city...and never hit or got hit by anyone as he speeds through stop signs! And, how the baddies had guns but somehow were easily defeated by just some close-quarters martial arts.

As I've never seen another Seagal movie, I am naive. Perhaps in his earlier films (before he got too old for this) he actually KICKED someone....here he just uses a lot of wrist holds and punches. It's high quality martial arts...but also so limited that it felt silly....sort of like Martial arts from the waist up. The only kicks I remember were from his team members.

Overall, a silly film which simply provides a vehicle for a lot of violence. Not much depth here and not for anyone wanting anything approaching a good movie.

An American action thriller; A story about a CIA/DEA enforcer investigating a plot to bring deadly weapons and terrorist organisation leaders into the USA over its border with Mexico. To prevent an attack on American soil, he must turn two savage forces against each other. The chase and surveillance sequences play out well even if the plot is a bit protracted and exposition is heavy-handed. The dialogue is a bit of a letdown, full of expletives for reasons that will mystify. Seagal has a good presence as a man cool under pressure, his demeanour laid back and enigmatic when not ruthless. His fighting scenes are less impressive, though, in close-up camera angles, because Seagal is not limber enough for the athletic character he purports to be. Finally, the production quality: CGI rendering is below par, and sound falters early on with some of Seagal's spoken dialogue.

Steven Seagal has done some good, or at least watchable, films. Particularly 'Under Siege'. He has also done a lot of mediocre and less films, indicative of laziness and that Seagal was well past his sell by date, and a good deal of them are even very bad.

'Contract to Kill' is one of the very bad ones. Awful even, and for me if ranking Seagal's filmography from best to worst it would be towards the bottom. Did not expect much, but watched it because Seagal has shown signs that he can be halfway decent and as said not all his films are bad. Also do appreciate the action genre and there are good films out there in the genre, classics even. 'Contract to Kill' is far from that, more closer to a waste of time that shows little signs of trying.

Seagal himself gives another lazy and wooden performance that shows that he was not interested and wanted to be somewhere else. His reading-from-an-autocue-like and robotic line delivery in particular betrays that. The rest of the cast are just as poor though in all fairness have little to work with.

The characters are ones we know very little about and don't care what happens to happen, so unengaging and one-dimensional they are. The dialogue is risible, with a lot of cheesiness, awkwardness and far too much talk delivered with little emotion or momentum and bordering on the near-incomprehensible.

Its excessively talky nature affects severely the pacing, which never comes to life. There is no urgency, let alone tension, intrigue or suspense. The action doesn't feature enough in comparison and suffer from pedestrian choreography and bacon-slicer-like editing. The story is by-the-numbers, dull and not always easy to follow.

Direction is flat and ill-at ease, while the sound/soundtrack are one-note and obvious as well as poorly recorded and the whole film looks cheap. And it's not just the editing, the slapdash special effects, drab photography and laughably bad green screen (that was too obvious and jarring) are just as bad.

Hate to say it, but to me nothing works in 'Contract to Kill' and it is an awful mess in every way. 1/10 Bethany Cox