ON DEADLY GROUND (1994) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Steven Seagal Writers: Ed Horowitz and Robin O. Russin Starring: Steven Seagal, Joan Chen, Michael Caine, John C. McGinley, R. Lee Ermey, Billy Bob Thornton
Martial arts master Steven Seagal (not to mention director!) has built a career out of playing an allegedly fictitious martial arts superman who never gets hurt in fights, talks in a hushed tone, and squints at any sign of danger. He's also the most consistent individual in Hollywood today, since all his movies suck. They basically represent his egotisitical tendencies about his art (that is, martial art). I'm sure the guy's good, and he seems like a nice guy on talk shows, although a tad haughty, but these movies he makes are all the same: a guy who is basically indestructable, is maybe wounded supposedly mortally, then comes back with a vengeance and goes buddha on all the baddies asses (although I kinda liked "Under Siege"). Of course, this one, as a change, has a "message" that is drilled into our mind...of course, after he blows up a lot of stuff and kills a bunch of people.
So why do I watch his crap? I usually don't. I will never, and you can hold me to this, I will NEVER pay to see this man's movies, unless, and only unless, he's in a supporting role (i.e. "Executive Decision") and I'd definitely pay if he dies (i.e. "Executive Decision"). But this one has a special place in my heart. This doesn't mean it's good or that I even liked it. This was the last movie I watched with my deceased uncle, and we had one hell of a time ripping it apart a la "Mystery Science Theatre 3000," and this was a couple years before I had heard of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000."
In this one, Seagal plays a worker for a mining factory set in Alaska and run by the greased-up typical shallow villain, this time played by an Oscar-winner to give the movie some more clout - Michael Caine. It seems that Caine wants to do something with his oil factory that includes him dumping oil all over Inuit land. Around the 20-30 minute point, Seagal speaks up to him in what seems to be the typical speech to all the vain entrepeneurs (what with his new "Fire Down Below," another "message film"), and Caine has him bumped off...or does he?
Seagal is rescued by some Inuits, and falls in love with one of them, played by Joan Chen, who CAN act, hypothetically, but, for some reason, not here. One of Caine's cliched henchmen (played here with a lot of overacting by John C. McGinley) shoots the cheif of the Inuit clan, and Chen and Seagal go on a voyage to take down the oil factory...literally, of course. At one point, Seagal gives a wonderfully hysterical speech about how he doesn't have any options but blow stuff up. He even goes as far as to say, "I don't want to kill someone," and in the same breath, he asks some guy where the arsenal is.
I have no problem with violence. I'm a huge John Woo fan, but he paints his films with suspense, skill, style, depth, characterization, and just plain cool violence. In the films of Seagal, the suspense mainly consists of the baddie attacking him stupidly, and him either wounding or killing them. At some points, they use the cliche of the talking villain, where the villain has the advantage, can shoot Seagal, but begins talking by either telling him his big secret plan, or saying a corny line, to which Seagal says something hokey back, and has had enough time to devise of a way to do away with them, and does. This would be okay if there were any suspense or if it didn't take itself seriously at all, like in the case of this summer's "Con Air." But Seagal is serious about his skill, and of course, his message.
I wouldn't mind if this was a message film in the way that they present it to you with evidence. But Seagal has no idea how to present a film where the message is subtle, not pounded into the viewer's mind. The villain is totally shallow and cartoonish, thus we can't take him and his motives seriously, and while Seagal talks about being kind to the environment, he also goes ahead and blows up a square mile of rig, and kills some workers who were just doing his job. Then at the end, he spends a good 10 minutes giving a speech, just in case you didn't get the message from the trailers. What Seagal doesn't realize is that no one takes his films seriously (although maybe a couple do) and any message he has is no only redundant, but doesn't comfortably fit in his film, which is filled to the brim with hokey violence, crap suspense, stupid melodrama, and characters who have about as much emotional depth as a petri dish.
As far as Seagal and his acting, he's rather boring. He squints, he kills. Period. Nothing else. Oh, yeah, there's corny one-liners ("I'm gonna reach out and touch someone!"). Of course, he's the star, and we're supposed to root for him and all, so he makes all the villains unbelievably stupid and a bunch of jerks. Michael Caine, who's a great actor, is just supposed to yell and look cold. He does it well, I guess, but this is no "Alfie." Of coure, no one was expecting that caliber of performance from him. His big henchman, John C. McGinley is kinda boring as well, but is not horrible. And we even get a small performance from that god of drill sergeants on celluloid, R. Lee Ermey (from "Full Metal Jacket") as a hired assasin squad leader who gets to say the obligatory speech about how dangerous Seagal is, just for the movie trailers and for Seagal's ego. And also, look for Billy Bob Thornton as one of Ermey's assasins.
Anyway, to conclude this all, to judge one of Seagal's movies is to judge all of them (except for "Under Siege" and "Executive Decision," though the latter is not really a "Seagal movie"). They all have this same formula, they all have the same action, same villain, same plot, but this one has that message, which makes it more excrucitating to watch. I mean, if you do rent it, and I don't reccomend you do, make sure you just skip the last 10 minutes. But I have to put it to Seagal for creating a film so bad, that the last film I viewed with my uncle was a pleasurable one.
MY RATING (out of 4): * (extra star for the fun it is to watch and mock)
Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews