Alright party people?

I know this is a day later than I said I would post, so apologies for that! But it’s here at last, the first Steven Seagal film of the blog: Out of Reach.

Out of Reach is from 2004 and features the 50+ Seagal as a former undercover agent who has retired to live out in the woods. He is contacted by his former partner and employers (exactly what company or agency he worked for never became clear to me, so I’ll just refer to this employer as ‘The Company’) and asked to perform one last job. When he refuses, they decide to kill him. Their exact reasons for doing so are also unclear; the best explanation we get is: ‘It’s time to put an old dog out of his misery’. Seagal manages to fight his way out of their ambush, stopping on his escape to collect his post. Throughout the introduction to the movie, we see Seagal corresponding with a young Polish girl, an orphan, who he has become pen-pals with, and when he picks up his post he has another letter from her home- suspiciously saying only that Irena ‘will no longer be able to correspond’. He heads to Poland to discover Irena has been taken by a Human Trafficking ring, and, with the help of Polish detective Kasia Lato (Agnieszka Wagner) sets about rescuing Irena and killing his way through the crime ring and his former employers.

As you can probably gather from the above synopsis, this really is the most basic, clichéd action film plot going. The retired agent who gets dragged into one last caper, the plucky female sidekick, the endangered kids flimsily justifying any and all violence by the protagonist. It’s all there. Cliché, of course, doesn’t equate to ‘bad’, necessarily. But it can point to a certain laziness or lack of originality, and indeed Out of Reach is, regrettably, not a good enough film to rise above this by-the-numbers plot.

There are numerous problem s which prevent this film from being particularly enjoyable. On the whole, it lacks polish or and real kind of craft. Not only is the plot extremely standard fare, but the characters are thin, the action uninspired and the dialogue really awful in places. And that’s before we get to the specific Seagal-isms which plague this movie. Let’s talk first about the overall feel and effect of the film. Aside from a couple of nice location shots, this film is visually indistinct from any other action film. Seagal looks the same as he always does, in a suit that’s clearly a little too big for him, the villains are all interchangeable besuited goons with guns and the slow-mo that pops up 3 or 4 times in this film is unimpressive. The film is what you might show an alien if you wanted to show them what a 20th Century action movie looked like, if you wanted to give an impression of a whole genre without anything distracting like characters, wit or excitement. On top of how the film looks, the second half of it feels extremely low stakes. This is because, just like the ‘bad movie diaries’ guys note in their piece on Contract to Kill, Seagal never seems in any real danger. He plays a peculiar kind of tough-guy here who seems so infinitely capable that he doesn’t take one single hit until the last 15 minutes of the film- and yet can barely bring himself to move his arms. Every single walking shot of Seagal’s character in this movie, he’s got his arms hanging by his sides. He doesn’t emote, even when he’s cracking wise. His threats are delivered in the same kind of monotone whisper he uses to order a drink or ask to use the telephone. Seagal barely turned up for this shit, which is consistent with reports that he only spends 3 hours maximum on set per day. The man cannot be bothered. It’s hard to feel any sense of excitement or peril when the main character shrugs off every bad guy with barely a raised eyebrow, and the quick fire editing used to cover up Seagal’s lessening skills mean that no blow really feels like it lands. The broad effect is to make an action film where the action never really feels like it matters.

Next, let’s talk about the dialogue (some offensive language ahead!). It is very poorly written, staggering between two separate issues: 1) Stuff that’s supposed to sound cool just sounds daft; 2) Some of it is borderline nonsensical. Some examples of the first problem:

-Something is referred to as ‘always a constant’. If its a constant, of course its always a constant. That’s what a constant is. It’s like saying: ‘that big tree is large’.

-Seagal claims: ‘Don’t worry, I closed my eyes during the procedure’ after removing a bullet shot just above Kasia’s breasts. THEN HOW THE FUCK DID YOU SEE WHAT YOU WERE DOING.

Some examples of the second:

– ‘Pain is your friend… It will set you free’

-‘You’re playing a whore’s game. And you know what happens to whores? They get fucked!’

It’s just dreadful. Not cheesy enough to be funny and not witty enough to seem cool. It feels almost like one of those bots people design to write fake tweets or passages using someone’s previous writing, except for action films. Poor dialogue seems to be almost a constant of bad films. I’m beginning to think it’s a close to a litmus test of a film’s overall quality as any other!

Finally, the third major thing that gives this film it’s ‘character’ is its essential nature as a Steven Seagal film. He starred in and executive produced this film. Firstly there’s the forgettable title, which follows the Seagal format of containing exactly three words, just like (*deep breath*): Above the Law; Hard to Kill; Marked for Death; Out for Justice; On Deadly Ground; The Glimmer Man; Fire Down Below; Half Past Dead; Into the Sun; Today you Die; Mercenary for Justice; Against the Dark; Driven to Kill; A Dangerous Man; Force of Execution; A Good Man; Sniper: Special Ops; Code of Honor; The Asian Connection; The Perfect Weapon; Contract to Kill; and Beyond the Law. They just could not be more interchangeable. Secondly, as alluded to before the film has to frame the action in these rapid-fire cuts, which most agree is to better mask the fact that Steven Seagal, in his latter years, is not the young martial artist he once was. On top of that, as discussed, he doesn’t seem to want to put any effort in. I LIKE Martial Arts action sequences, but the ones in this and, one has to assume, most of Seagal’s later works, are extremely unexciting. This massaging of Seagal’s ego also likely accounts for why none of the villains seem to pose him any real threat. Given the evidence of this film, Seagal’s character (Williamson, if, for some reason, you care) could take all your faves on without breaking a sweat. Which sounds cool, until you realise how dull it is for the main character of a film to not be presented with any real challenge. Then, there’s Seagal’s weaknesses as an actor. He’s monotone, he doesn’t emote at all and doesn’t seem to have any comedic timing for his (admittedly thankless) one-liners. He might once have been good in a fight, but he’s no thespian. Finally I’d point to the odd tendency in Seagal films for him to be a merciless killer. As EL-P (of Run the Jewels) put it in the article I linked last week, Seagal is ‘always about being a complete fucking asshole’. He might be the protagonist, the good guy, but Seagal kills without remorse, even brags about how much he’s going to enjoy killing IN FRONT OF THE CHILD WHOSE INNOCENCE HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING FOR. Not only is it easy for him, but it feels very natural to just off numerous people (some of whom are already beaten and defenceless) in search of his goal. If he was playing a nasty anti-hero, this would be fine. But in this film we’re supposed to buy him as a kind of reluctant assassin who just wants to retire to his hut and save the children. The films wants to give us a bad man with a good heart, but instead gives us a slightly bored looking killer who happens to be fractionally less evil than the villains.

In truth then, not one I’ll be returning to! It did have a couple of enjoyably odd moments, and if you enjoy the specific flavour of Seagal Souffle, then this serves up exactly what you’d expect- albeit not quite as deep into his late career weirdness as we can expect now! But basically Seagal doesn’t really bother to show up for this movie, and unless you’re a fan, neither should you!

Best performance: Agnieszka Wagner as Kasia Lato who does a better job than the film deserves.

Worst Offence: The dialogue

Elevator Pitch: Taken before Taken and significantly worse.

2 stars!

-Tom

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