Review by Dan Taylor
Any
longtime ER reader knows damn well that
I have a soft spot in my heart – not to
mention my head – for Steven Seagal movies.
People are too quick to write the doughy
one off, but I stand by him through thick
and thicker. (Somebody let me know if I'm
starting to recycle gags from other Seagal
reviews on this site. Thanks.)
I was there for ABOVE THE
LAW, his initial foray into the action world,
which stands as one of his top two or three
flicks. I even hung in there during the
rough HARD TO KILL (coma cop gets revenge),
MARKED FOR DEATH (Big Steve fights crazy
Jamaican voodoo drug lords) days. We shared
in his joy after UNDER SIEGE garnered him
his best notices, and we suffered in silence
when he blew it all with self-indulgent,
unappreciated classics like ON DEADLY GROUND
(best chubby guy takes on Michael Caine
flick ever!) and OUT FOR JUSTICE (chock
full of needlessly violent mayhem).
But, recent years have not
been kind to our man Steve's cinematic stature.
GLIMMER
MAN tried to deliver action and laughs
yet came up empty-handed. FIRE
DOWN BELOW recycled the aforementioned
ON DEADLY GROUND to the point where they
were almost indistinguishable. (I say "almost"
because FDB is the one where he's never
far from a guitar.) And THE PATRIOT (not
the Mel Gibson one) suffered a fate worse
than death – it went straight to video.
Now, I knew that my man Steve
still had some life left in his husky-sized
workout pants. Hell, if they can pull something
like RUSH HOUR over on the sheep, er, audience,
what's to stop Big Steve from making a comeback?!
Well, films like EXIT WOUNDS,
that's what.
You know, there was a time
when they were sorta fun to watch in a junky
kinda way. Steve'd "handle" a
gun in his own clumsy, catcher-mitted fashion,
and we'd get the inevitable cue-ball or
roll-of-quarters in a sock kinda thing.
Hell, I know people that actually paid
good money to study Aikido after seeing
ABOVE THE LAW! Now when he jumps out of
the way of a bullet, we've got to do it
in super-slow-motion because we're just
not buying it anyway else. Hell, we're not
even buying it that way!
EXIT WOUNDS features your
basic cookie-cutter good-cop-gonna-clean-up-the-corrupt-precinct
storyline. Seagal's a rough-edged cop (oh
yeah? I defy you to find one!) who saves
a Vice President's life but goes overboard
with his gung-ho, renegade style. Stop me
if you've heard this before. The Cop-Who-Can't-Handle-Him
(Bill Duke) assigns him to the world's worst
precinct, much to the chagrin of his Oldest-Buddy-on-the-Force
(Bruce McGill, yes, ANIMAL HOUSE's D-Day).
You get zero points in the Big Steve Game
for figuring out which one of them turns
out to be the head of the cop-run drug ring!
You know, I said you could stop me if you've
heard this before...
Of course, Steve's the outsider
which doesn't sit well with the Obvious-Cops-on-the-Take,
who might as well have jackets that say
"Bad Guys" on the back, or the
tough-but-beautiful precinct captain who
is only there to give the super-charged
homo-erotic nature of the whole damn thing
a teeny tiny shot of estrogen.
As for the fight scenes, well,
I had to fight to keep my lunch down every
time Tom Arnold was on screen. He plays
a Springeresque talk show host who takes
an anger management course with Seagal in
what passes for the film's desperate, blind
stabs at humor. Rapper DMX fares little
better as the drug-kingpin who's not what
he appears to be, but that, too, is of little
consequence.
EXIT WOUNDS was supposed to
be Big Steve's step back into the majors
after a short vacation. Frankly, I'm not
waiting up for his next effort. Unless,
of course, it's the long-rumored UNDER SIEGE
3...
