Operações Especiais

I would have given this one also a 7 1/2 rating as well. It is good to see Seagal getting back into action in a decent B-action movie. Especially after all the crap he's been making over the last couple of years. But it is hard not to see that the years of good living, eating and drinking have taken their toll on Seagal, he really looks old and out of shape, and no matter what they try to do with long and wide clothes, it is pretty clear the guy is fat.

None the less this movie is exactly delivering what you're expecting, action, funny one-liners and huge amount of martial arts scenes, and some decent hand to hand combat scenes from Austin, and even a new upcoming guy is allowed to show off his kicks and punches. Bren Foster actually reminded me of the protégé of Van Damme , named Scott Adkins, and I hope we will get some movies off this guy coming out soon.

So if you like this kind of movie, you wanna see some decent action sequences and you don't mind the gaps in the script, then is a must see for you, otherwise, stay away from it.

Two ex-black op soldiers, Manning & Cross (Steve Austin and Steven Seagal respectively) are assigned to a decommissioned maximum security military jail for 'people of interest' when all hell brakes loose somehow tied to the newest two prisons that Cross & Manning recently brought in.

Director Waxman knows how to shoot the best sides of Stone Cold and Steven Seagal, as well he should based on the films he's done with each in the past (albiet separately as this marks the first team-up of the two) and the action scenes are pretty good which makes up for a fairly generic, heavily cliché riddled script. Die Hard in a prison with two John McClains, if you will.

I had even expectations for this film. On one hand, this was not only one of the rare filmic team-ups between Steven Seagal and a fellow action hero of similar caliber, but it was also the longest time the former had taken to make a movie in almost ten years - something I hoped was the result of more effort being made in the production. On the other hand, it was directed by Keoni Waxman, the filmmaker who's now officially worked with Steven Seagal more times than any other but whose vehicles are among my least favorite of Seagal's filmography. Then again, I liked Waxman's outing with Steve Austin well enough, so I considered that perhaps MAXIMUM CONVICTION here could achieve some kind of acceptable balance. I was right: the movie is acceptable, but far from great. It doesn't make all it could have of the collaboration between Seagal and Austin, but is still an okay-enough DTV action outing.

The story: two private security contractors (Seagal and Austin) are caught up in a deadly situation when the two prisoners they had delivered to a secret prison are targeted by a lethal team of mercenaries led by an ex-CIA mastermind (Michael Pare).

It needs to be said: however good they may look on paper, Steven Seagal and Steve Austin do not make very exciting partners. Of course, one factor is the limited screen time they share, but even when they're both in the same scene, they seem relatively apathetic to each other and don't display any discernible chemistry. On their own, they do alright, with Austin as definitely the more charismatic of the two but Seagal getting more fight scenes. They have equal amounts of screen time. The co-stars do fine but are sort of wasted: B-movie staple performer Michael Pare clomps his way through a boring role, and even though Steph Song - one of the aforementioned prisoners - has a good deal of award nominations to her name, she's given no strong acting scenes and her role could've been played by most anybody. The script by TRUE JUSTICE-regular Richard Beattie is pretty passive, highlighted only by a couple particularly mean-spirited deaths and the occasional funny line by Austin.

The action is predominantly composed of shootouts, but there's nothing special to these. Seagal's stunt doubles are hidden relatively well, but at the expense of the editing, which is once again pretty choppy during his fight scenes - not as much as it has been in the past, but it's still pretty annoying. With that said, Seagal still gets the occasional cool move in, and the final brawl - though painfully one-sided - is fun to watch in a guilty way. Steve Austin only has one real fight, but prior to this he gets entertainingly innovative in the prison kitchen, turning a gas tank into a missile and attacking a mercenary with a pot of boiling water. The best fight in the movie doesn't belong to either of them, though: despite being stifled by the same editing present in Seagal's fights, Bren Foster brings an energy to his single brawl that the other encounters were sorely lacking. Overall, I deem the action content on the low side of passable.

That also counts as my synopsis for the movie in general. Amateurish post-production inserts can be found here and there but are otherwise restrained, and Steven Seagal is doing his own voiceovers again, but these plus points are deflated a bit by the lackluster story and ho-hum pacing of the film. While it's a good deal better than the previous BORN TO RAISE HELL and therefore a general step up for Seagal (I'm not as well-versed in Austin's output, so I can't speak for him), it's not nearly all I was hoping for during the year-and-a-half spent waiting for it. Consider it a rental.

Several years ago I essentially stopped watching Steven Seagal's new movies, because they had become unbelievably bad. However, this new film of his intrigued me because he was being paired up with Steve Austin, so I decided to give it a look. After watching it, I swear once again I will not rent any future Steven Seagal movies. Austin is not a great actor, but he does seem to be trying - certainly a lot better than Seagal, who is awful. Seagal has gained so much weight that he waddles instead of walks, and his martial art sequences are so rapidly edited that it's clear he can't pull off multiple moves like he did with his earlier films. Though plenty of blame has to fall on the shoulders of director Keoni Waxman, who films the action sequences (both martial art and gun battles) in the dullest way possible, and lenses everything in unattractive and murky colors. By the way, though the DVD box seems to suggest that Seagal and Austin fight side by side, in actual fact their characters have almost no time together.

The plot is customary, but tensions and thrills are there and shooting/fighting has some kind of meaning, not just for (viewers) fun. Inclusion of Steve Austin and Michael Pare provides also additional value: Seagal does not dominate on screen and - after reaching 60 years - does not have to kick butt or give factitious remarks all the time. The ending is guessable, of course, and there are trivial scenes containing kitchen utensils and hot steam, for example, but they do not seem ridiculous or dull. And due to the existence of inmates-intruders-defender, confrontation obtains extra dimensions.

In other words, Maximum Conviction is okay entertainment, a must for Seagal's fans and a killing-time for those not hating him and/or fond of military operation movies.