My view of the movie:
This is without a doubt the best movie Steven Seagal has done in at LEAST 10 years. He's back!
Why?
1) Music. Great, asian feeling, mysterious feel, very very Kung Fu
Bonus in the credits for you all. (He does a performance of BBQ, a song from The Crystal Cave. On of my favourite songs!)
2) Environment. Beautiful settings of Thailand, rainforests, small asian towns, backgrounds, asian style houses and interiors. And ofcourse the beginning with Seagal with long black hair, nice to see that. In the behind the scenes video you can see a bit more of that. Love the big budda too, at the coast. I love the smallt town where he is a kind of medicine man. And helps prevent someone who wants to kill himself.
3) Message. Yes, Seagal used to want to deliver a message in his glory days movies. Something that got lost on the way of later movies (specially on deadly ground, you know what I;m talking about haha) . Well....message recieved Sensei! But the message of this movie is not so over the top as that. Yes he needs to resque a kidnapped girl, but the story is different from his last movies.
4) Acting. Yes, he actually DOES ACT in this movie. He is caring, sad, laughs, calm, serious. Because for the first time in years he finally gets to do a movie he cares about. So will the fans. This is his dream project. He is really acting, love to see that.
5) Martial arts. Oh yeah.......havnt seen this great martial arts in Seagals movies since Belly of the beast and Into the sun. Absolution there was a nice fight scene in the end, but in Attrition it is really the chinese kung fu style, love it! Kung Fu, Aikido, Wing chun, Thaiboxing. Its all there, packed into a glorious martial arts explosion of precision and grace. Ofcourse you can see the stund double if you watch closely, but if you are just enjoying the movie then you dont notice that. It is not so obvious a stunt double as his previous movies haha. (out of reach, soooo bad, you can see a man standing which is NOT Seagal, too obvious.. so bad)
6) Action. What is a Seagal movie without a few gunshots haha. But this time its focus is more on his hand to hand combat, and not the gun. If you ask me they could have deleted the gunshots scene. Because it makes the setting a bit less peacefull. But it is part of the action!
He looks good too, looks like he lost some weight. (probably not but if you think so it is good
But he definately practised the fight moves. He sad that before in an interview.
To sum it up, it is just a great movie. Thank you Mr Seagal for showing us all you can still get the job done, I loved the movie. I used the word 'love' a couple of times. LOVED IT.