Above the Law (1988).

Review #2038: Above the Law.

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.

Under Siege.

Review #1877: Under Siege.

Cast: 

Steven Seagal (Chief Petty Officer Casey Ryback), Tommy Lee Jones (William Strannix), Gary Busey (Commander Peter Krill), Erika Eleniak (Jordan Tate), Colm Meaney (Daumer), Patrick O'Neal (Captain J.T. Adams), Andy Romano (Admiral Bates), Dale Dye (Captain Nick Garza), Nick Mancuso (Tom Breaker), Damian Chapa (Tackman), Tom Wood (Private Nash), Troy Evans (Granger), Dennis Lipscomb (Trenton), Bernie Casey (Commander Harris), Glenn Morshower (Ensign Taylor), and Raymond Cruz (Ramirez) Directed by Andrew Davis (#176 - The Fugitive and #187 - Holes)

Review: 

“Most people are surprised that the film is as sophisticated as it is. It appeals to people who have a point of view about nuclear weapons and the story thrusts you into an incredible situation that is not far-fetched.” - Andrew Davis

Admittedly, the sentence "A movie considered to be one of the best with Steven Seagal" is not exactly a big selling phrase in the realm of picking out action movies. This was the fifth film for an actor that in some ways looks and sounds like what would happen if a Soldier of Fortune ad came to life, one that you may remember had gone from stunt coordinator to starring in Above the Law (1988), which had been directed by Andrew Davis, who had only been known as an action director because of Code of Silence (1985). Davis would get to work with Jones again after their collaboration on The Package (1989). The writer for Under Siege was J. F. Lawton (a former member of the Coast Guard Reserve), who wrote it as a spec script named Dreadnought, which evidently was written with a big budget in mind before it got scaled down (Lawton would also serve as an executive producer, and like a number of his films, Seagal also produced the movie) to be made for roughly $35 million. Seagal actually turned the film down a couple of times, apparently because he was resistant to the character played by Eleniak, calling the character as a "bimbo", but revisions were done that pleased him, with him calling the film "an adventure, not an action movie" with human moments and humor (he has since claimed it was his idea to have the character in the film for humor, but can you really take that seriously?). At any rate, Seagal got to be director and star for On Deadly Ground (1994) in exchange for participating in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (with Romano, Mancuso and Dye returning), which takes place on a train. As for Davis, he got the job for The Fugitive (1993) because of how Harrison Ford liked what he saw from this film.

The strange thing is that the film only features Seagal sparingly if you really think about it, since he is basically present for about 40 minutes of a 103-minute film (this fact was apparently presented to Davis by a Warner Bros. executive as to why he should direct). The ship (USS Alabama, which was docked in Alabama) is basically the most important presence of the film anyways, given the scenario of the film (basically Die Hard on a battleship). It moves along full speed with execution being at the forefront in terms of action staging and (let's just say) quirky characters to carry the movie, complete with playing on an actual real-world development of US Navy surface ships having their nuclear weapons removed in 1991. To be generous to Seagal, he does well with the material given to him in part because he seems relaxed here, one who can play on the silly parts of the script (the cook who happens to be a former Navy SEAL being teamed up with a Playboy playmate) without coming off as wooden or out-of-touch. In other words: if you let him kick and try not to say too much, he does fine. Besides, with Busey and Jones on the other side of the coin, how can you go wrong? Man is it fun to see these two get to play adversary, particularly from Jones. Busey can chew on scenery like it was a solid piece of steak, let's get that out of the way, since he gets to grit his teeth in brazen intensity, complete with doing mayhem in a dress for a few moments. Jones still manages to be the key attraction, doing so with manic chaos in all the enjoyable over-the-top ways. Naturally, he gets the best ending sequence, because of course he does, as him and Seagal get to make faces in hand-to-hand combat before he gets taken down with the art of overkill: his eye gets gouged, then he gets stabbed in the head before he is pushed into an electrical radar screen (this plays right into my theory that one could cut Seagal films into a horror movie, since one other guy gets pushed into a band saw). Eleniak (an TV actress and model with one obvious showstopper scene) is okay, mainly there to add a few chuckles in the attempts at making Seagal and her look like a normal tandem despite both a considerable height difference (basically a head), which does work out for a few neat moments. Meaney may be playing just an Irish heavy but being a Star Trek alum makes one smile anyways, while O'Neal (in his final film role) makes a decent character presence/sacrificial lamb. The film makes for a solid thriller, mostly because one gets a collection of good action beats without sacrificing much in the plot stakes. For some odd reason, there are plans for a reboot of this film, which confuses me in part because how can you improve on what was? The accomplishment of the film is not so much the plot but the maneuvering of spectacle and familiar actors to the right places for fun, and that is more suited for original filmmaking rather than drawing from the well. At any rate, it is the direction of Davis in making a suitable thriller in confined space that helps to bring Under Siege into winning material even as it reaches three decades of age.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Holes.

Review #187: Holes.

Cast,
Shia LaBeouf (Stanley Yelnats IV), Khleo Thomas (Hector Zeroni), Sigourney Weaver (Louise Walker), Jon Voight (Marion Sevillo), Patricia Arquette (Kate Barlow), Tim Blake Nelson (Dr. Pendanski), Dulé Hill (Sam), Henry Winkler (Stanley Yelnats III), and Eartha Kitt (Madame Zeroni) Directed by Andrew Davis (#176 - The Fugitive)

Review
Holes is based off the 1998 novel by Louis Sachar, and the film follows it pretty well. There is one thing to distinguish it a bit from most book to film adaptations, and that is that Sachar wrote the screenplay for this film, which gives some of the good part in the film, with the rest just being the acting, atmosphere, wit, and charm. LeBeouf *sigh* can be a good actor, with the films he has been in on this show (#057 - Transformers and #058 - Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen), this is a good one by him. The others in the cast such as Weaver, Voight, Thomas, and Kitt all do a good job in the time they're given. Good cast with good direction make...well, a good film.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: The Fugitive (1993).

Review #176: The Fugitive.

Cast
Harrison Ford (Dr. Richard Kimble), Tommy Lee Jones (Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard), Sela Ward (Helen Kimble), Joe Pantoliano (Deputy U.S. Marshal Cosmo Renfro), Andreas Katsulas (Fredrick Sykes), Jeroen Krabbé (Dr. Charles Nichols), Daniel Roebuck (Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Biggs), Tom Wood (Deputy U.S. Marshal Noah Newman), L. Scott Caldwell (Deputy U.S. Marshal Erin Poole), and Julianne Moore (Dr. Anne Eastman) Directed by Andrew Davis

Cast
This movie was based off the classic 1960s TV show of the same name. Ford and Jones are excellent, playing off each other great. Jones does the best job, conveying a sense of ell, doing his job as a US Marshall. As the movie continues on, the doubt against Kimble unravels which you see from Gerard's point of view. One thing I notice is that it turns from escape film to conspiracy as the film gets to the end which feels a bit odd. But nevertheless, this film is heart pounding with good amounts of action in an excellent film.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.