Killing Salazar

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.

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.

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.

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