End of a Gun

Actually I would give this a 5.5.

Obviously one needs to separate his older movies to screen vs direct to media as is his MO for some years.

This particular movie, has some good comments and insights from the main character which raises the rating. It is not over indulgent in violence, and has minimal sex. It is just plain entertaining.

If you just want to enjoy a movie and relax without being hyper-critical, End of a Gun is a good movie to watch.

I sure wish he would lose some weight and get a better hairpiece. It appears he and Travolta go to the same wig shop.

Seagal made some pretty good movies back in the day, but now he seems out of his element and past his prime. It reminds me of John Wayne playing Attila the Hun, no matter what he played he was always John Wayne. Seagal's style of "speak softly and carry a big stick" works in some venues but it has become his trademark and it's getting old. His constant whispering of dialogue seems so out of place with the gangsta slang he uses. He mumbles his words without any emotion whatsoever. I just don't believe the types of characters he portrays would be so soft spoken and philosophical. He really needs to find a script that is written just for him and his style of acting. The action, when available, are his typical Aikido moves. The script is sort of a rehash and compilation of other similar action movies. Nothing new or striking. It's a movie you could turn off halfway through and forget about.

Where did the star of "Above The Law" go? Where is that svelte, femur snapping dude who had us waiting for the next villain to tell him to go to hell? Well, long gone, I guess. An overweight caricature of Steven Segal appears to be starring in a genre where he is no longer in his element. The whispering, slang using ladies man, who could kick the eyes out of a snake at sixty paces, is no more. Instead, we're faced with something we cannot recognize, a man who is attempting to woo us with action hero status, but not quite getting there. His "gangsta" lingo and attitude with the French police (who do not have French accents, curiously) who are investigating his killing of a mobster in a parking lot, just isn't making the grade. We see something that looks so ridiculous and out of place, it causes us to allow the story-line to wisp about in thin air, and we cannot seem to catch it. With a twenty-something cutie (he's rescued from a violent boyfriend) coming on to a bloated, sixty-four year old in Segal, its difficult for any viewer to believe in the story, even those of us who are rooting for the old "Nikko" to jump out at any time. Even in the over- choreographed and under-whelming fight scenes, which quite frankly, have us scratching our heads in disbelief, we come to realize how bad this film is, and how much we long for the Steven Segal of old.

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.

'End of a Gun' is one of the very bad ones, though not 'Contract to Kill' awful, almost anything is better than that. It is not one of Seagal's worst, the scenery has some atmosphere but that's hardly an endorsement. 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. 'End of a Gun' 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 and over-compensate.

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 laughably bad 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 effects and drab photography also.

Overall, a mess in almost every way. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Segal must have accumulated thousands of air miles traveling to Romania for his films, and worse, pretending it is somewhere in the USA ! With minimal action and less so from our hero ... this has become a predictable formula for many of his BORING TV-films. Throw in some heavy-looking Romanian dubbed heavies, and a few semi-naked starlets ... and you are almost there ! A complete waste of time from an overweight has-been who can hardly string a couple of words together ...