Preview Post 07/10/20

Hello Readers!

I hope you are all as well as can be expected! Here in Britain the Summer is giving way to the Autumn and the temperature is beginning to drop. All the more reason to bring you the fearsome heat of my amateurish criticism of bad, bad films!!

This week, we have a real treat. Pound Shop Flix will be losing its’ Steven Seagal virginity with 2004’s Out of Reach.

Yessir, for those of you who don’t know, Steve Seagal was a late 80s/ early 90s action movie star in the vein of Claude Van Damme or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although, in truth, he was specifically a trained Martial Artist, more like Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee, and that- rather than any acting talent- was his way into the profession. He was part of the explosion and bullet filled world of action movies that have since helped define the period in popular consciousness. His films weren’t quite as dominant as, say, Predator, or First Blood, but made good money and shot Seagal to stardom nonetheless. This is all interesting enough, and, had it been left there, Seagal would have likely been remembered as an action star briefly at the top levels of Hollywood who moved on with everyone else once that period was over. However, unlike Schwarzenegger and Van Damme, who have developed a self-awareness about their place in cinema, or indeed Sylvester Stallone or Liam Neeson, who appear in action movies about kicking arse DESPITE their age, Seagal still makes movies like the last 20 years never happened. Or, at least, he tries to. His body is no longer up to it. Thanks to his varying lies about his pre-Hollywood life, Seagal’s actual Martial Arts credentials are not entirely clear, though he was at least once proficient enough to teach Akido, and was fit enough to keep up in films like Above The Law or Under Siege. However, he is widely agreed to have not kept fit, and can do longer convince as the violent bruiser he specialises in playing. But no-one seems to have told Seagal this.

For a few years now, Seagal had been churning out straight to DVD films at an astounding rate, all of which follow the same kind of plots and formulas and feature him in essentially the same costume- orange sunglasses, black military fatigues. They are comparatively low budget, and appear to be, essentially, vanity projects where rapid editing is used to make it look like Seagal can still fight legions of baddies and win. He’s creating a unique, post-heyday canon of bad, po-faced action movies that belong to another decade. And somehow keeps making enough money to keep doing it. At this point is can surely only be die-hards and people like me, who watch these films to take this piss out them, who are propping up his career at this point. Although there is always his friendship with Vladimir Putin…

In truth, Out of reach is probably a little too early to be considered part of this latter day orange-sunglasses-wearing Seagal-ist canon. Though it did go straight to DVD and was critically mocked, so it should perhaps given indication of where his career was going. Either way it should be good fodder for this blog!

I’ll have the post up on Out of Reach by Saturday 17th. Look forward to sharing this new disaster with you all! Until then however, here are some suplementray things you might enjoy:

First: A longer summary than mine of the absurd later career of Steven Seagal: https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/steven-seagal/the-tao-of-steven-seagal/

And second, tangentially related to Seagal: Here’s how Bruce Lee’s famous One Inch Punch worked, mechanically speaking: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a3093/the-science-of-bruce-lees-one-inch-punch-16814527/

Until next time folks, thanks for reading!

-Tom