UP until a month ago I had no idea that this film even existed. Upon seeing it I wish it would have stayed that way. I only seen it because I knew Steven Seagal was part of a very promising cast that included Denis Hopper, Tom Sizemore, rapper Nas and Jamie Pressly. When I think action such films as Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Under Siege come to mind as great examples of what action should be based on. This film rips off every one of those films. The story features a terrorist bomber who is blowing up the city (Die Hard), a cop on the edge (Lethal Weapon) and Steven Seagal (Under Siege). But in action a rip off of another film isn't a bad thing as long it is done with excitement and style. This film has all the right elements to be an action classic but fails horribly under its bad direction, terrible script and dreadful acting. Hopper plays Swann, the philosophical, Irish bomber who thinks he is creating art by blowing things up. Sizemore is Nettles, a cop on the edge who is going to blow if he doesn't went some of his frustration from having his wife and son blown up by a car bomb (or so his partners say). Lastly Seagal is head of the bomb squad named Glass (for some reason none of the main characters have first names) who lost some men a year early to a bomb call gone wrong and decides to preach about the morals of life to other people. The story is standard action fare that would seem solid enough for a few decent jolts of action and the first scene (the one where Glass losses his men) packs one heck of a blast (no pun intended). But after that scene ends and we fast-forward one year later the film crashes under its terrible acting and scripting. The actors are given nothing to work with and show it by the very little they produce. Seagal seems like he is bored and could fall asleep any minute, but I don't blame him the whole time he just sits around and tells people what to do, he only gets one five minute fight scene towards the end of the film. Hopper is so bad it is almost laughable, in fact it is just plain hilarious. He speaks with an Irish accent only when he feels the need to and in one scene he even sounded German for a minute. I guess that explains why he has a goatee and wears glasses, I wouldn't want anyone to know it was me either. Sizemore actually does a good job at acting, well as good as one can expect from Sizemore. Just to bad the character he is acting isn't the one from this film. He is supposed to be a cop on the edge but I wouldn't have known he had a problem unless everyone around him wouldn't have always been telling him he did. Nettles and Glass both have one thing in common, the both have had a past tragedy but neither of them once touch on their inner problems, Glass doesn't even seem to care about what happened at the start and aside from two flashback scenes, Sizemore doesn't seem to either. If this film were a game to see who could deliver the most inept performance they all would have won. The plot takes us nowhere fast and when it finally seems to want to go somewhere, we realize that it hasn't really advance after all, it has just pulled in a scene from some other movie and hoped no one would notice. The direction is also so bad to a point where it is laughable. There is a scene in which Swann and Claire (Jamie Pressly) are driving in a car against on of the worst blue screen effects I have ever seen. To make matters even worse, when Claire tells him to pull over the background almost doubles in speed and then comes to an instant stop. It really has to be seen to be believed I even found myself rewinding several times just to make sure my eyes weren't just playing tricks on me. This effect was so bad I almost spilt my sides from laughing. Now I am not biased towards this film, I happen to love no-brainer action flicks, but this film relies too much on a plot that is nonexistent and not enough of action sequences. Along from the films opening the only other action scene is the climax with a few small explosions in-between that don't account for the bad scripting, acting and directing, making this one of the lower point in action history.
