Cast:
Steven Seagal (Sergeant Nicolo "Nico" Toscani), Pam Grier (Detective Delores "Jacks" Jackson), Henry Silva (CIA Agent Kurt Zagon), Ron Dean (Detective Lukich), Sharon Stone (Sara Toscani), Gene Barge (Detective Henderson), Chelcie Ross (CIA Agent Nelson Fox), Ronnie Barron (CIA Bartender), Nicholas Kusenko (FBI Agent Neeley), and Gregory Alan Williams (FBI Agent Halloran) Directed by Andrew Davis (#176 - The Fugitive, #187 - Holes, and #1877 - Under Siege)
Review:
"The whole motivation behind me doing this film was my trying to make up for all the things I've seen-and done. I'm tired of seeing us try to destabilize governments, prop up dictators and get involved with drug smugglers and crooks."
Admittedly, it is hard to look at an action star unless you start with their very first film just to see where things could go from that point. This also applies to the director at times too, if you think about it. There apparently is a rumor that the career of Steven Seagal started because one guy in Michael Ovitz really thought that the man that instructed him in aikido could be in films. Of course, since Ovitz happened to be the founder of Creative Artists Agency, sometimes it really does help to have friends in high places. Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan but moved to Fullerton, California when he was five years old. After his teenage years (spent between a local dojo and playing rock music), he became interested in Japan and lived between there and the U.S. for years (he taught at a dojo in Japan due to marriage). Seagal has claimed at times to have been close to CIA agents when living in Japan teaching aikido (along with setting up safe houses for the Shah of Iran in 1979), but who the hell knows? Seagal did have some film experience before this film with a total of three credits, which was as stunt coordinator in The Challenge (1982), martial arts instructor in Never Say Never Again (1983) and choreographer in A View to a Kill (1985). The screenplay was done by Steven Pressfield, Ronald Shusett, and Andrew Davis, while Seagal and Davis (who also served as producers) co-wrote the story, and it would be the last one Seagal was given a writing credit for until his direct-to-video days years later. Davis, a Chicago native, was actually a graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before he became interested in film. He made his feature debut with Stony Island (1978), a musical drama that featured his brother Richard alongside a depiction of his hometown and musicians. The Final Terror (1983) failed to find a distributor for years, but his third film in Code of Silence (1985), featuring Chuck Norris in a crime action feature, was both a hit and one that pegged him as an action director.
Strangely enough, the movie does show pretty well just how a screen presence Steven Seagal could be from the very get go, one that utilizes its 99-minute runtime for a solid conspiracy feature that invites the viewer to see an action star come out of the blue with efficient nature. In lesser hands, it might have come off as a bizarre attempt at making a "Soldier of Fortune" magazine come to life, but Davis and company have stocked interesting characters and atmosphere that make this a film with interest in what it wants to say that comes off as sincere (for an action film anyway) and not fanatical. Seagal is a good reason for it, because there is something about his screen presence that manages to show his aikido skills along with a sobering presence that shows him kick ass but also look more than just a caricature trying to play a "Chicago cop with Italian roots". In other words, he stands on his own two feet to kick as a star, one that isn't so much about quips or rampant violence (not that those are bad things of course). The sequence involving the bombing in a church is probably a good scene to gauge just what Seagal can do within mounting levels of tension, or perhaps the sequence near the end with Ross about just who isn't above one's "law" is just as useful to highlight. Silva makes for a quality adversarial presence in those bits that he slithers onto screen, which relies more on terror lurking around, even if the lone fight sequence can only go one way. Grier makes a solid partner to bounce off Seagal in the procedural bits (Dean and Barge seem right at home there anyways), while Stone (a few years away from star prominence) makes quality weary support with Seagal. Of course, since my favorite presence to see is Ross in a delightfully scuzzy man on the side, your milage may vary. Released in a time where secret wars of the CIA could be read in book form in public, Above the Law maintains a steady pace in action and narrative that makes for a credible and solid first venture for its star and a neat feature for Davis to maintain consistency as an action director.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
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