No matter what your opinion of Steven Seagal's acting abilities or the kinds of material he's ground out, you have to admit he has certain advantages over the rest of us that go beyond martial skills. For instance, in this story of revenge against a corrupt politician and his dozens of goons, Seagal is shot at the beginning and spends seven years in a coma, wrapped up in hospital sheets, sustained by various tubes and mysterious devices that beep and blink on and off.
Yet, consider that he suddenly wakes up after seven years in a hospital bed and still sports the rufous bronze of his earlier physical incarnation. And one would think Seagal would be overdrawn at the memory bank but instead he remembers EVERYTHING that put him there. None of this "Where am I?" crap.
I asked myself, "Self, how is it possible for a man to remain brain damaged and comatose and still recover his memory and his motor skills in no time at all?" But all I got back was a lot of gibberish about Wallerian degeneration and nodes of Ranvier and extra-pyramidal this and that, so I gave up trying to make sense of it.
Is it really necessary to spell out more of the plot? Seagal wakes up remembering where he's hidden some evidence that will convict a current senator of fraud, extortion, autosexuality, mopery in the first degree, and wearing white after Labor Day.
The rest of the film takes us through Seagal's attempt to recover the evidence and the senator's thugs trying to prevent him from recovering the evidence. To observe that, along the way, there is some violence is like saying that a skin flick contains some pornography. Not to worry, though. Yes, a good friend dies and his wife is shot to pieces but nobody touches Seagal. Seagal, unarmed, is involved with three knife fights on independent occasions. Well, two knife fights really, because the last one involves a Chinese chef's knife that looks more like a meat cleaver. Of the dozens of dead and maimed bodies that Seagal's passage through the film generates, exactly 34.2 percent are thrown through glass windows. I counted.
The villainous senator's campaign slogan is, "You can take that to the bank." At one point, Seagal mutters to himself, "I'm going to take YOU to the bank, senator -- the BLOOD BANK." Yet, for all the wisecracks amid the mayhem, it's a thought-provoking story. The thought it provokes is: "Dear God, don't ever let Steven Seagal get mad at me."
Yet, consider that he suddenly wakes up after seven years in a hospital bed and still sports the rufous bronze of his earlier physical incarnation. And one would think Seagal would be overdrawn at the memory bank but instead he remembers EVERYTHING that put him there. None of this "Where am I?" crap.
I asked myself, "Self, how is it possible for a man to remain brain damaged and comatose and still recover his memory and his motor skills in no time at all?" But all I got back was a lot of gibberish about Wallerian degeneration and nodes of Ranvier and extra-pyramidal this and that, so I gave up trying to make sense of it.
Is it really necessary to spell out more of the plot? Seagal wakes up remembering where he's hidden some evidence that will convict a current senator of fraud, extortion, autosexuality, mopery in the first degree, and wearing white after Labor Day.
The rest of the film takes us through Seagal's attempt to recover the evidence and the senator's thugs trying to prevent him from recovering the evidence. To observe that, along the way, there is some violence is like saying that a skin flick contains some pornography. Not to worry, though. Yes, a good friend dies and his wife is shot to pieces but nobody touches Seagal. Seagal, unarmed, is involved with three knife fights on independent occasions. Well, two knife fights really, because the last one involves a Chinese chef's knife that looks more like a meat cleaver. Of the dozens of dead and maimed bodies that Seagal's passage through the film generates, exactly 34.2 percent are thrown through glass windows. I counted.
The villainous senator's campaign slogan is, "You can take that to the bank." At one point, Seagal mutters to himself, "I'm going to take YOU to the bank, senator -- the BLOOD BANK." Yet, for all the wisecracks amid the mayhem, it's a thought-provoking story. The thought it provokes is: "Dear God, don't ever let Steven Seagal get mad at me."