Starring: Steven Seagal, Jacqueline Lord, Roger Guenveur Smith, Luke Goss, Michael K. Williams Directed By: Don E. FauntLeRoy Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Label: 20th Century Fox Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: April 18, 2006 Running Time: 91 minutes Theatrical Release Date: April 25, 2006
Description: Soldier of fortune John Seeger (Steven Seagal) is the best in the business…the business of kicking ass! When you're a mercenary, there's always going to be casualties, but no job is too treacherous for Seeger, who's blackmailed into orchestrating an impossible prison break, leading a team of heavily-armed soldiers on a deadly mission to South Africa to rescue the son of a billionaire arms dealer. But, when Seeger finds out he's been double-crossed, it's payback time, and now, there's going to be hell to pay!
"Justice" Was Not Served "Mercenary for Justice" has a lot of things going for it: it skips the more obvious production snafus of Steven Seagal's DTV exploits, has a pretty good supporting cast to show up the star, and has an overall tone of wanting to succeed - more so than the tired, voiced-over attempts that bookend it ("Attack Force" , "Black Dawn" ). On the other hand, the film suffers from a lack of focus that eventually disintegrates a promising story into little more than a wannabe-smart-but-actually-dumb vehicle for Seagal, and makes the movie's unsatisfying action content painfully clear.
The story's a bit of a doozy, but here goes: John Seeger (Seagal) is an ex-military mercenary who's strong-armed into a controversial mission by threats to the lives of his deceased best friend's family. Ordered to join a team of guns-for-hire to break a rich arms-dealer's son out of prison, Seeger is double-crossed when his bosses reveal their ulterior motive - prompting Seeger to fight back in his own way.
The film's first 20 minutes are its highlight: the massive, " Black Hawk Down" -inspired shootout is probably the most professional-looking scene that's ever been featured in Seagal's DTV career, and is definitely something I had never seen him involved in before. It's extremely well done for this kind of movie, and effectively starts it off with promise. Sadly, the action takes a turn for the mundane, and we're left with a remaining 70 minutes of repetitive shootouts, throat-slitting, and a sloppy hand-to-hand fight scene in a bathroom. While the gunplay remains decent, the fact that the majority of the casualties counted by Seagal are police officers, prison guards, security personnel, and various other non-bad guys puts a bit of a disappointing dent in the "Justice" part of the title. Seagal is supposed to be a good guy!
As for the acting, it's a bit of a hit & miss: without mentioning mumbly Seagal, there's Luke Goss ("Hellboy 2" ), Roger Guenveur Smith ("Justice"), Michael Williams ("The Wire"), Adrian Galley ("The Deal"), and Langley Kirkwood ("Final Solution") getting a piece of the action, and they all generally do well with their roles. Still, you can't help but wonder whether a talent like Goss was miscast as a pathetic CIA producer when he's capable of kicking butt in his other movies...
What really brings the film down, however, is the plot's overcomplication: while it kind of makes sense when you think about it after the film has ended, trying to understand the motives, relationships between the characters, and exactly who's doing what is a real chore whilst watching. For example, when Seagal begins to get a few up on his adversaries, you don't know at once that he's doing it because there's no explanation to the villains' misfortunes until five minutes later. This happens more than once, and kills the satisfaction of watching the evildoers get theirs - a plot tool that's one of the few things that Seagal is really good at.
In all, I'm not surprised that Seagal and director Don FauntLeRoy pulled off "Urban Justice" as their next attempt, for "Mercenary for Justice" showed a lot of promise. Alas, that's all it really is - promises that aren't fulfilled. I wish very much that a different writer had been hired - I have no doubt that the plot could've been delivered better by somebody who had done more than work on short films before he undertook a full-length feature. For what it's worth, this one's staying on my shelf...but it doesn't stand a good chance of overtaking any other film up there anytime soon.
Let's give Segal a mulligan on producing this one. He was distracted by the on-set buffet! We, Sid the Elf, are worried that Steven Segal, the early favorite for a 2008 woody, will take a reduced acting role in the new B he's now producing. Don't do it Segal! Sid needs you in Unintentional Comedies like fans of your smooth ballads need you to keep pumping out albums. Yeah, albums. Segal actually took time away from his lucrative film and competitive eating careers to make sweet sweet baby-making music.
This is why Mercenary for Justice fell short of Sid's lofty expectations for a Segal flick. He just wasn't in it enough. This movie had a killer ending, which was the only part of the plot that revolved around Segal, of course that might be because the man has his own gravitational pull at this point. There is one point when they show him from a profile view in a suit. He has a distinctly white Biggie Smalls on the cover of Life After Death vibe. Which brings up another point. Since when did Segal start talking like he's black? I guess all those years of working with illustrious actors such as Treach, DMX, and Ja Rule have taken their toll on our favorite portly-size action star. Segal is like aging adult-film star at this point. The camera angle has to be perfect, and the action better be sped up to keep the viewer um...interested. Like we said in our Urban Justice review they need to do some very fancy camera work to make a 285 pound senior appear to be moving quickly.
So, Sid's final thoughts: this is a movie that makes no sense whatsoever. But, if you're looking for a movie to pop in and get some unintentional comedy laughs at, look no further than Mercenary for Justice; starring Steven Segal, his huge pot belly, and his Michael Myers wig.
Whoa......a level of shame that must be witnessed Seagal shows no signs of stopping his domination of the direct to DVD bad action movie market with his 40th film in about three years. They keep showing these babies on cable, and after recently catching this, I was more shocked than from the last Seagal flick, a similar fare (title unimportant) from only a year or two past.
It must be seen to be believed. If you ever saw any of Seagal's classic bone-crunchers of the late 80s and early 90s, which while ridiculous, at least had some good production values and some level of technical competence, then you can appreciate how bad, how shameless, how...unbelievably shameless it all is. I really think with the way these films look and the way they're presented...he should just have his own weekly TV series on primetime, with the same plot (ex-CIA guy, blah blah blah, grunt groan snap). These films really look like bad primetime shows about...fat, ex-CIA 'operatives' who come into all kinds of violence one way or another. There is a slight measure of fun, some self-reflexivity to the work, the filmmakers knowing that anyone morbid enough to watch knows exactly what a Seagal films is...but then, these movies make Out For Justice look like John Huston.
You can while away some time watching how fat Seagal is, how he continues to adapt the long, leather coat (I like how they embrace his now trademark hands-over-the-belly fatman stance on the artwork), how he is unable to do the most basic stunt (anything involving a jump, or lifting his leg greater than 20 degrees). He was constantly using stand-ins and stuntmen for everything over 10 years ago...now it's comical. The tricks they employ to literally hide him from scenes is fun to watch and note. The extreme close-ups so his massive, tanned face engulf the screen, and always with the long coats (the coat is always on, even in the occassional medium shot of the expanding, receding star). Yes, he's been fatter, but Seagal isn't going to wow anyone with a fight scene...since, well, he doesn't appear to be in the fight scenes (save for aforementioned tanned closeups). Perhaps those mob ties are not gone, because he is working at an alarming rate as if to satisfy a debt to someone culled from one of his earlier classics.
There is nothing to discuss. Seagal can only be applauded for this campaign, the man is making tremendous money with no concern for shame, dignity, etc. Plus, he's a renaissance man, touring with his band, being a lamai, and releasing his own energy-spiritual product thingees.
The amazing disappearing accent The first thirty minutes of the film will make your head spin as several plots are thrown at you all at once. It opens with a high CIA agent working with a mercenary boss to help topple an African government with the use of expendable mercenaries. They do it so they can get rich off of oil and diamonds (oh brother...) but things go wrong when French commandos (who are about as well trained as Vietcong, apparently) are flown in to stop the mercenaries from toppling the government. In response some of the mercenaries kidnap the French ambassador, (easily taking down the THREE guards...) but this fails when the truck carrying the ambassador and his family is blown up. The mercenaries are left on their own and escape on a helicopter. Guess who's among them? Steven Seagal himself, whose character is described as the "most decorated hero of the Gulf War." (HA!)
Cut to a while later. Seagal is comforting the widow and son of one of his fellow mercenaries who died in the last battle, and then he gets abducted by the mercenary boss he used to work for. It's then revealed that the mercenary boss has captured the widow and son of Seagal's buddy to convince Seagal to work one more job. It turns out that the son of a Greek arms dealer has been arrested and is being transferred from a top South African jail to Ft. Leavenworth. (huh?) The mercenaries have been hired to break him out at any cost. Meanwhile, an old romantic fling of Seagal has been captured by the same CIA operative as before and is being used to trap Seagal so he doesn't reveal past and present scandals.
Whew! OK, there, it took me two long paragraphs to describe the first thirty minutes.
Any way, Seagal soon turns things against his opponents, teaming up with old buddies within the group and sneaking into a bank to reveal the truth about the corrupt CIA agent and mercenary boss AND saving his partner's family. It all works out because Steven Seagal is clever and a heck of a fighter...um, wait, scratch that. It works because the script says it does, and actors have to follow the script.
"Mercenary for Justice" has about one thing going for it: lots of action, and admittedly it's often entertaining. If you want to see dead bodies get thrown around (literally) then this is the film for you. It's definately a lot more entertaining than some of Seagal's modern works, like "Out of Reach." That's the ONLY reason I've given it three stars. If it had not had that, it would have been given one star for it's many faults. One is the acting, which is terrible across the board. The one that stood out the most was Luke Goss, who plays the mercenary boss like he's trying to imitate Richard Harris. Then of course there's Seagal, who just flat-out STINKS in this movie. I can shrug off his trademark emotionless voice, but apparently he was supposed to have a southern accent in this film. I don't really know, because in some scenes he has it and in some scenes he doesn't. It's like they filmed those scenes with the accent first then said, "Uh, yeah, you're not doing it too well, just forget it," and continued filming. Ironically the best actor in this whole thing is Adrian Galley as Bulldog - ironic because he goes through half of the movie not saying anything.
Besides the acting, there's the whole moral issue with this movie. Someone reviewing another Seagal film brought up the "cover rule" of action movies: a hero in an action movie is only considered the hero because he's on the front cover. You get some sense of that here. Seeing Steven Seagal take out wave after wave of French commandos may be forgivable since he's defending himself, but later on when he's killing all these South African policemen you're left wondering if his character really has any sense of life. Think of this: what if he had told the South African police chief (who is portrayed as an uncorrupt fellow) about the CIA and mercenaries, and set up a trap at the jail and allowed him access to the bank. That way less people would have died, as oppposed to what Seagal did, which was allow a lot of South African police at the jail to become fodder and then take out a lot more police at the bank. Considering the police are NOT bad guys, but just cops doing their job and hunting down who they think are dangerous criminals, doesn't this all seem a little dark? And then we're supposed to feel warm and happy that he would go save his buddy's wife and son? Why doesn't he just use them as pawns in his scheme as well? Oh yeah, I forgot, because then that would be "evil."
If you get the DVD then make sure to see the "Making of" featurette. Director Don E. FauntLeRoy's stumbling over his opening comments ("Steven Seagal...he's like an idol man, he's an idol...") answered a lot of questions I had about the film's style. Even funnier are all the comments the crew and cast give to Steven Seagal, namely about how amazing he is. One of them says that Seagal's always trying to find a way to make the film better. (he doesn't do a very good job) Another one says something along the lines of, "A lot of action stars are fake, but Seagal is for real. He's a real kung fu artist." GIMME A BREAK!! In most of his recent films, any time a simple stunt like jumping over a fence or sliding down a rope is filmed, a look-alike replaces him. Not to mention that most of Seagal's moves nowadays consist of grabbing a guy by the arm and punching him (this happens about ten times in this movie alone) and most of the time it only looks like it works because the director has filmed it to. This is all combined with the fact that Seagal has packed on a lot of weight since his early days, and it's just not as believable to see him beating up people twice as young and most likely just as strong as he is. It's also not very believably to see young female characters swoon over this large, mumbling, mossy-haired, 50-year old man.
Consider this: Jackie Chan is about Seagal's age, yet he's in tip top shape. He also does all his own moves - in the movie "Operation Condor" there's a scene where he jumps over a tall gate with only the use of his legs - and he really did that! He doesn't need someone to come in and replace him with all the camera shots changed so the audience doesn't catch on. I have to also admit that the stuff Jackie Chan does in his mid-50's is way more exciting and even more amazing than stuff he did in his 20's. So I don't want to hear, "Go easy on him, he's old" or "He's really talented!" Once upon a time he was amazing, now it's no longer believable. And yes, I will freely admit I'm not in tip-top shape myself, but you don't see me in movies beating up tons of people.
As I said before, you should only watch this movie if you want to see a corny action flick. It delivers on that regard. If you go expecting a good movie or you're hoping Seagal's come back from his direct-to-video hell, I can only point at you and laugh.
Not Worst, But Quite Close to it I don't expect much from straight-to-DVD films, but I know they could be sometimes better than our expectations. Steven Seagal's `Mercenary for Justice' begins with several pretty good actions which are trying to be tension-filled cross-fire battles of big-budget films like `Black Hawk Down.' Considering the budget that must be much lower than "BHD" (the film company is Millennium, well-known for its B-actions), the opening looks promising even though some characters act very stupidly and Steven Seagal himself looks the same old Seagal, too fat and slow.
It seems, however, the film spent most of the money in the first 30 minutes, where Steven Seagal appears as mercenary named John Seeger. This time we are not allowed to know his background, his career or his mission. He is sent to some small island where battles are going on between the rebels and the government, and French ambassador and his family are kidnapped (by Seeger's trigger-happy team). Some corrupt fraction of CIA is involved, but we are not to know why this bad guy is involved in the mission. Perhaps the filmmaker also didn't know it, either. Never mind, you can tell bad guys from good guys. Bad guys look very bad doing bad acting, and good buys look very good doing the same.
Anyway, some bad guy threatens Seeger to break in a jail in South Africa and free a rich drug lord's son. The situation is like, Do it, or we will kill your dead buddy's family we kidnapped. This is the only part you can find some reasonable plot in this dreadful mess. The rest of the film is about body counts that keep rising without meaning, or sloppy actions done by sloppy characters. The CIA guy can find a woman carrying cash in her brief case at airport by chance; Seagal's character can find the hideout of the kidnappers in a second, and he doesn't even ask anyone about it. Seeger can also hide in the backseat of a car, but how can you miss this plump guy in his conspicuous costume hiding in your car? Not only that, he can also vanish like wind!
I suspect that the story or script (if ever) was changed on the set. It looks as if they shot some action sequences first (with the principal actors), and abandoned other scenes that are on the script. But that's only my speculation. All I can be sure of is that Steven Seagal does his own stunts, showing his martial arts skills a little, well, just a little.
Cinematographer-turned director Don E. FauntLeRoy had worked together with Steven Seagal for `Today You Die' (as director) and `Into the Sun' (as cinematographer). Both films are poorly acted, shot, and edited, but things are getting worse. `Mercenary for Justice' is not his worst, but quite close to it.
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
