Killing Salazar

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.

The main character in this ruins it with how boring he is. This story had a lot of potential but we get this Johnny Sins tooth pick looking soldier who you couldn't care less about which just like the movie before it Steven Seagal was in called "The perfect weapon (2006)" I think it was the main character of this that made the story boring where I couldn't wait for it to finish. Though the ending has a nice twist and the possibility of a sequel it's just dull.

There are some pretty good fight scenes, the bad guy is established pretty well but if you don't care for the main character of a story why even bother. Would I watch this again? no but I've seen worst movies with budgets 2x (minimum) higher.

This is another Seagal movie that doesn't have very much Seagal in it. Luke Goss plays the actual main character. Seagal does show up at the end though and does some stuff which is better than Against the Dark. I can see what is happening in this one too which is a plus.

The movie is built around a framing device of Seagal interviewing Goss about a mission that went bad. Most of Seagal's scenes are in this framing device and he just sits there mumbling nonsense for a lot of it. The rest of the movie is told in flashbacks.

The acting is fine for action sclock though some people, like Georges St-Pierre, are clearly here for their fighting skills rather than their acting ability. There are a couple of female characters who are apparently just here for their large talents, One only speaks a few lines at the very end and I don't remember the other one having any dialogue at all. Seagal is his usual mumbly, nonsense spouting self but he does stuff and has a fight scene which is better than some of his other movies. He actually gets hit and knocked down during the fight which was surprising and made it seem a bit more like he was in an actual fight with a real opponent. It's low effort but not as low effort as, say, Sniper Special Ops.

Where this movie really falls down is the pacing and story. There are stretches where nothing much is happening and people are just standing around talking. It gets really boring in spots. Then everything happens at once and everyone is shooting everyone. It would be charitable to say that the plot is complex. I would say that it's confusing and convoluted. There are twists that don't seem to serve much purpose beyond being twists. The final twist does make sense in retrospect and actually was set up though. A lot of the characters are barely characters at all. There were several "Oh no not...whatshisface/whatsherface" moments where someone was killed off and I didn't care because they hadn't been fleshed out at all.

This isn't comically terrible like some of Seagal's later movie. It's just below average action schlock with a needlessly convoluted plot. It's not the worst thing but there are lots of other, better action movies you could be watching instead.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. It works, because we only have to watch a 30-second Seagal fight scene once, out of the whole film! Luke Goss is far more than competent and there's a nice twist at the end. Entirely watchable. Say what you want about Seagal, the man has a direct to DVD formula and sticks with what he knows. Either you like him or you don't. The over the top arrogance and unbeatable confidence is what you want out of your action heroes, so enjoy it for what it is and understand it's no Oscar winner. It has it's place. And for all those folks that ridicule Seagal's weight, age, fighting style - 99% of them would not want to fight him unarmed. Just relax and enjoy the action.

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.

'Killing Salazar' is one of the very bad ones, with exactly the same time as 'Contract to Kill' except not quite as bad. 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. 'Killing Salazar' is far from that, more closer to a waste of time that shows little signs of trying.

Seagal himself, in a role that is not a lead but more an extended cameo, 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.

Overall, a mess in every single way. 1/10 Bethany Cox