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Oh yes, this unmistakably is a B-movie but what else did you expect from a movie starring Steven Seagal, Steve Austin and Michael Paré in it.

It's dumb, simplistic and not even all that entertaining or action packed to watch. Even the simple little things such as gun- and fist fights have a low-budget look to them. Guess it's true there is definitely still a market and a large group of fan-boys for these type of movies but this still remains far from the best thing the genre has to offer.

It's also one of those movies again in which you never really fully have an idea of what's going on it. What do the bad guys want exactly? Who are the good guys fighting for? And why did these obvious well experienced professionals planned their escape so poorly? Seriously, it's one of those movies that you'll discover has more and more plot holes and inconsistencies in it, the more you start to think about it. So you could choose to switch of your brain while watching it but in that case the movie still needs to be fun and entertaining enough to watch, which this movie just isn't.

Problem is that the movie is being far too simple with its setup. It's mostly set at one location; a secret military prison. The one group tries to get their hands on a prisoner and escape while the other group, consisting out of Steven Seagal, Steve Austin and others are trying to stop them. And really, that's all there is to this movie and its story. There still was plenty of opportunity for some more creativity and originality but the movie did absolutely nothing of the sort.

Besides, Steven Seagal never was all that great anyway but he now-days definitely is too old and out of shape to still convincingly play roles in these type of straightforward action flicks. But he most definitely is not the worst thing about this movie. His acting for instance gets surpassed, in an even more negative way, by Steve Austin, who might look big and impressive but still has far too little charisma to be an awesome, tough action-hero, in this particular movie. I don't know, he just seems to be more the sort of guy you want to have as a cameo appearance in your movie, or as an Ivan Drago type of character, who doesn't ever speak too much and its main goal is to look strong and imposing.

I actually feel I'm being kind toward this movie with my rating but perhaps that's also simply due to it that there are definitely still far worse genre movies to watch out there. At least this movie never becomes laughable or offensively bad but just bad in a sort of more general way.

4/10

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About Frank Veenstra

Watches movies...writes about them...and that's it for now.
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4 reacties:

  1. Defenitly a comment of a steven seagal hater and a van damme lover. then my question is too this hater. why are you stop looking at seagal movies and go look van damme movies ???.

    bye for know

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven’t seen this movie and don’t plan to. Especially after reading reviews like this one, which is not very different from everyone else’s. A 3.1 rating on imdb, which I find just about right for a Steven Seagal movie, is very telling. I never considered Seagal an actor, but these days, it’s just pathetic to see his bloated, old and inexpressive face, showing in an action movie.
    I find Frank’s review balanced, to the point and overall well written. Thank you!
    As for the comment posted above by mr. ‘defenitly’, with too much time on his fingers and too little brain in his pumpkin, why don’t you go f#ck yourself and learn some English, you little prick?!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's got a decent premise and had a lot of promise, but in the end is just let down by the cheap Canadian TV production values, a decidedly unambitious plot, and poor acting from all besides Pare.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've actually sat thru a few Seagal movies in the past and come away ....unscathed. I have also seen Steve Austins attempt at "acting" and I still for the life of me wonder who lied and said he had screen presence. I've seen better emoting out of roadkill. Michael Pare is ...tolerable to say the least but I have to wonder how badly did he need the paycheck showing up onscreen with a has been and a used to be? Thanks for sparing me the time and money it would have taken just to sit through this dreck Frank! Nice to know that are some people out there who still active brain cells left .....

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