Fora de Alcance

After the semi-entertaining,back to basics approach of Belly of the Beast it appeared that Seagal was on a minor comeback.Then along comes out of reach to flush all that down the toilet.

Seagal is a retired agent(how many times can one man play a retired agent!!!)who crashes a human slavery ring in Poland headed by Matt(Transporter)Shultze.Get ready for some bone-breaking,gun-fighting,neck-breaking mania that never happens.Its not that it is totally boring,just unexceptional.

Out of reach is missing a lot of the trademarks that make up a Steven Seagal movie.Not a lot of hand to hand action.More gunfighting instead. The final Mano a Mano between Shultze and Seagal is just modest at best.Seagal actually takes a few hits.The setting seems like the same faceless location of his last three movies.

Seagal is a little better here.He handles the fights okay.But the dubbing and the raspy voice make one question his health.Ida Nowakowska holds her own and does a pretty good acting job as the cop helping Seagal.Matt Schultze is the best thing Out of reach has going for it.He plays a nasty villain as usual with high potential.But ends up wasted and Ill used.

Good Idea undone by producers?Bad Director?Star?Who knows.It had some potential.Its mauled by one of those freeze-frame-feel good endings.

I paid nearly 4 bucks to rent this and I don't feel good.

This film begins with a retired CSA agent by the name of "William Lansing" (Steven Seagal) enjoying some peace and quiet in a wildlife refuge area with few outside distractions. However, when a young Polish orphan that he was sponsoring by the name of "Irena Morawska" (Ida Nowakowska) mysteriously stops writing to him, he becomes concerned and decides to travel to Poland to investigate the situation. To his dismay, he soon discovers that Irena has been kidnapped by a sophisticated network of human traffickers who know how to use their connections to remain hidden from the law. Additionally, it's also at this time that some former colleagues appear on the scene with a serious grudge to settle with him which then complicates things even further. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather strange crime-drama which suffered from an uneven plot and poor direction. To that extent, while I typically like Stevan Seagal films, I must say that I was somewhat disappointed with this particular one and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

The plot is like the movie: pretty neutral and not above standard, like almost every Seagal movie.

Clean settings - the white building is beautiful as a setting, a little highlight.

For the Seagal-fans, there is a bit of fighting in here, I think not enough for you guys. Seagal acts like always, somewhat 'unpersonal'.

All kinda standard things we'll see: typical bad-guy, in Poland everybody drinks :-( and there are a few one-liners (like "wrong answer").

Because I have a bit weakness for Seagal (he was like a small hero over ten years ago in his old movies).

So for that, I'll rate the movie ** out of ****

An American action thriller; Next stop Poland for Steven Seagal. The premise of the film is quite good - a martial arts master and former covert agent turned survivalist in America has lost touch with a young girl/pen pal from an orphanage in Poland. It transpires she has become a missing person. Seagal decides to investigate and track a human trafficking ring into which the young girl has unknowingly entered. "Out of Reach" bears some similarity to the film, "Taken", but it is a low budget production - badly dubbed, poorly edited. poor acting in parts. The story is directed in a style that resembles a fable rather than a feature film. As an action film, tension is at a low ebb and so the detective work becomes the main interest for the viewer. There is a memorable sword fight-off scene at the end: prey vs predator, protagonist vs antagonist, which is set in a white palace and this symbolising of purity as irony is impressive. This sequence is well directed and choreographed. For all its faults, and there are many in the storytelling, there is a heart to the film and an important subject.

Seagal reaches a new low in "Out of Reach" in which he plays a guy with a past (we don't know what exactly) who hangs out in a forest and looks for injured animals so he can heal them while communing with nature. He also corresponds via snail mail with a young girl in a Polish orphanage. When she is sold into slavery, Seagal has to travel to Poland where, of course, he gets to hang out with a babe, shoot it out with a bunch of heavies, and do some hokey martial arts stuff as well as try to act and conceal his big, fat gut. A sorry attempt at film making, "Out of Reach" has too many deficits to list here. Suffice it to say this B-flick is probably not worth your time and will probably be the last Seagal flick I'll be watching. (C-)