Born To Raise Hell - Reviews

rastafari

Well-Known Member
having watched a poor screener version today i watched the proper version and it better than i first said

heres the good and bad points

good
1.the fights are the best since maybe exit wounds
2.the action generally is well shot
3.the production looks better than the other romania films
4.the support cast is not has bead as other seagal films

bad
1.dubbing in spots
2.the end fight couls have been better(two one sided)
3.the editing in the first 20 minutes is a bit distracting(almost like a michael oblowitz film)
4.i found the story quite boring...i prefer dangerous man or driven to kill type films

also i would like to say seagals perfermance is better than i first said as i will be honest i skipped through alot of the screener version for the fight scenes ans seagal gives a decent perfermance in the film

overall its the best film seagal has made in romania by a mile but still not the best DTV film has it needed a better story...its shame we cant have the fights from this mixed with the story of DTK...that may be the best seagal film in years.I cant complain and im sure seagal fans who like his earlier films from the 90s will enjoy the fight scenes
 

Administrator

Administrator
Staff member
Well this movie is practically the same as the rest of his DTV releases. While no where near as bad as the likes of Out Of Reach it is still nowhere near the quality required for a cinema release.

Dubbing throughout the movie does not help. A movie where Steven Seagal is producer and even writes the story to have dubbing is dreadful and lazy.

Action was decent, some brutal stuff. He even uses some of the police techniques that we see used in Lawman.

Director did a decent job for his first attempt.
 

rastafari

Well-Known Member
Craig Robertson;205082 said:
Well this movie is practically the same as the rest of his DTV releases. While no where near as bad as the likes of Out Of Reach it is still nowhere near the quality required for a cinema release.

Dubbing throughout the movie does not help. A movie where Steven Seagal is producer and even writes the story to have dubbing is dreadful and lazy.

Action was decent, some brutal stuff. He even uses some of the police techniques that we see used in Lawman.

Director did a decent job for his first attempt.

i watched it again tofay and i agree with most of what you say but i disagree about the dubbing...its only really the voice over early on and maybe the odd line here and there that are dubbed

i agree though that the film is similiar to alot of his DTV films in that there are as many bad things as there is good things.

for me that best thing about the film is the fights and the action

the worst is the poor story,dubbing in places and no real co star
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
Average movie at best. The first twenty minutes the movie is all over the place and very confusing. After that it becomes pretty straight forward.

Fights are pretty good and brutal. Unfortunately every over the shoulder shot is a double and every time you hear Seagal 'talk' but he is off screen it is a voice double. Although the voice double did his best it is very obvious.

Overall I'd give it an 7.5 for a DTV movie, but as for cinema quality we would end up with an 4.5 out of 10.

And please, let somebody tell Seagal he should really, really stop with romantic/love scenes. They are killing, hilarious and way to sad. He makes a complete a** of himself with these scenes.


PEace
 

rastafari

Well-Known Member
Kotegashi;205087 said:
Average movie at best. The first twenty minutes the movie is all over the place and very confusing. After that it becomes pretty straight forward.

Fights are pretty good and brutal. Unfortunately every over the shoulder shot is a double and every time you hear Seagal 'talk' but he is off screen it is a voice double. Although the voice double did his best it is very obvious.

Overall I'd give it an 7.5 for a DTV movie, but as for cinema quality we would end up with an 4.5 out of 10.

And please, let somebody tell Seagal he should really, really stop with romantic/love scenes. They are killing, hilarious and way to sad. He makes a complete a** of himself with these scenes.


PEace

agree about the first 20 mins....its like it was editing by someone else compared to the rest of the film.I agree also with that rating 7.5 out of 10

the fights and shoot ots are the best for about 5-6 years easily but the story is just plain boring...also the love scene you mention is a joke and i cant believe seagal is still doing them
 

Clement3000

aka The Phoenix
A Masterpiece - to be celebrated by all Romanians!!!

My review is kinda going to be the same as what everyone else has said... This movie is by far the best of the Romanian films, the fact that I even have to say that is pretty disconcerting... The first 20 minutes of the movie reminded me of Uwe Boll's House of the Dead, all kinds of fast editing, with double and triple repeats of the same piece of footage.

WORST PART OF THE MOVIE: The love scene with the 19 year old girl was pretty one sided, i.e. lots of touching from a fully dressed man in sweatsuit, sex while fully clothed? I'm not sure how that works, maybe in Romania it's normal??

BEST PART OF THE MOVIE: The fight scenes! by far the best fight scenes in any of Seagal's direct to video movies! His hands are still extremely fast, the fight scenes are brutal, with very little doubles noticeable!

The pacing of the movie was also good, didn't find it overly boring.
I also didn't find the voice dubbing to be very much of a distraction.

SORRY BUT I HAVE TO SAY IT: I probably will get lots of slack for saying this, but this was by far Seagal's fattest! He looked absolutely horrible, at one point he had a bullet proof vest on which looked like a large, extremely tight bib... he looked bloated and really unhealthy....

I just wish we could take all of the good parts from his direct to video movies and make one really good movie... don't get me wrong I'm happy to see him still working, and the movies of the last couple of years (for the majority) are a great improvement over some of his earlier direct to video efforts, but STOP with the love making scenes, STOP going to Romania, and get back into even OFAK shape please :(

4 out of 5 stars (Seagal DTV scale)
2 out of 5 stars (regular non-Romanian movie scale)

See some screen shots of the movie attached


 

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Martin01

Well-Known Member
Staff member
The action is really well made, especially the shootouts. Chartrand knows how to film actionscenes. There are 4 fight scenes. Unfortunately, in the 1th and the 4th fight scene he use a fight double for some scenes. The 2nd and 3rd fightscene (minivan and restaurant) is very good, almost all from Seagal with some great aikido techniques.
The story is pretty dull, the sex scene is just misplaced and the editing is sometimes pretty annoying.

I would rate this movie with a barely 6/10. Surely the best Romania "adventure" until now and overall a solid DTV movie.

PS: Do you have seen that Chartrand also did a stunt for this movie? It's the scene where Shalahvi makes a higher roundhouse kick.
 
not his best DTV but certainly not the worst! very shaky camera work like its been shot with a handheld, too many close ups in every type of scene from shootouts to fights,camera was very close making viewing the action clautrophobic. shootouts were noisy and messy almost random.decent enough fights though.overall not as good as the keeper,driven to kill,dangerous man,pistol whipped and renegade justice but better than the other DTV films he has made.
 
Clement3000;205092 said:


BEST PART OF THE MOVIE: The fight scenes! by far the best fight scenes in any of Seagal's direct to video movies! His hands are still extremely fast, the fight scenes are brutal, with very little doubles noticeable!


See some screen shots of the movie attached



I havent seen the film yet, but the fight scenes look EPIC! I wish theyd stop with the whole 'awkward sex scene with a girl half of Steven's age' thing...It is NOT good
 

rastafari

Well-Known Member
Dragon1978;205121 said:
not his best DTV but certainly not the worst! very shaky camera work like its been shot with a handheld, too many close ups in every type of scene from shootouts to fights,camera was very close making viewing the action clautrophobic. shootouts were noisy and messy almost random.decent enough fights though.overall not as good as the keeper,driven to kill,dangerous man,pistol whipped and renegade justice but better than the other DTV films he has made.

i agree with that other than the keeper which i found boring and the fights were average at best
 
photomouse14;205129 said:
WHen will it be in the US?

It was supposed to be released on the 19th of October, but it apparently got moved up, but we dont have any official announcement from Voltage Pictures yet
 
outforamovie;205125 said:
I havent seen the film yet, but the fight scenes look EPIC! I wish theyd stop with the whole 'awkward sex scene with a girl half of Steven's age' thing...It is NOT good

I also haven't seen the movie yet, but after seeing fights, I am disappointed. I expected much better fights, but I must say that it's definitely not as good as you have said. The editing is again really crazy and confusing. Plus we very often see only bottom or upper part of fighter's body = we don't know if it is Steven or not. I believe Lauro Chartrand that Steven really did 90% of the fighting stuff. Nevertheless, I really don't like the angles of the camera ant the position of it. In my opinion, the director of photography f***ed that all again. The camera is very often too close...

I wish they had made it in the old school style, just as Pistol Whipped could have been. Is that too difficult to set the camera far enough, so that the viewers can see both fighters normally?

In addition, if it is true, that the story is crappy, plus bad actors in supporting roles, poor location ... I don't wanna buy this flick. 4 minutes of average Seagal fights don't satisfy me.

If only Steven returned to the roots, tried to lose some pounds (I hope the stay on set in Vancouver has helped him), used the production from Pistol Whipped and did movies in that style. I wouldn't mind having only one Seagal movie per year, if it was a solid one even for a cinema release. Unfortunately this kind of films is just a way to the end.
 

rastafari

Well-Known Member
SeagalMovieFan;205143 said:
I also haven't seen the movie yet, but after seeing fights, I am disappointed. I expected much better fights, but I must say that it's definitely not as good as you have said. The editing is again really crazy and confusing. Plus we very often see only bottom or upper part of fighter's body = we don't know if it is Steven or not. I believe Lauro Chartrand that Steven really did 90% of the fighting stuff. Nevertheless, I really don't like the angles of the camera ant the position of it. In my opinion, the director of photography f***ed that all again. The camera is very often too close...

I wish they had made it in the old school style, just as Pistol Whipped could have been. Is that too difficult to set the camera far enough, so that the viewers can see both fighters normally?

In addition, if it is true, that the story is crappy, plus bad actors in supporting roles, poor location ... I don't wanna buy this flick. 4 minutes of average Seagal fights don't satisfy me.

If only Steven returned to the roots, tried to lose some pounds (I hope the stay on set in Vancouver has helped him), used the production from Pistol Whipped and did movies in that style. I wouldn't mind having only one Seagal movie per year, if it was a solid one even for a cinema release. Unfortunately this kind of films is just a way to the end.

4 minutes of average Seagal fights don't satisfy me

im sorry but those fights are good fight scenes for a DTV film and you can tell its seagal for most of it

if you wanna watch a poorly edited fight scene look at machete which for me had seagals worst fight for a while and yet that film cost 25M
 
rastafari;205145 said:
4 minutes of average Seagal fights don't satisfy me

im sorry but those fights are good fight scenes for a DTV film and you can tell its seagal for most of it

if you wanna watch a poorly edited fight scene look at machete which for me had seagals worst fight for a while and yet that film cost 25M

I am sorry, but after the interview with Mr. Chartrand my hopes were much higher. Don't tell me that this kind of fights is just it what you wanna see. Look at Pistol Whipped, there were cool fights. In Btrh they just look strange to me and I am quite sad about that.
 

rastafari

Well-Known Member
SeagalMovieFan;205151 said:
I am sorry, but after the interview with Mr. Chartrand my hopes were much higher. Don't tell me that this kind of fights is just it what you wanna see. Look at Pistol Whipped, there were cool fights. In Btrh they just look strange to me and I am quite sad about that.

PW was good put it only really had 2 fight scenes of any note but it was a better film than BTRH

BTRH though had 4 pretty good fight scenes and although the plot was poor it was still better than i thought it would be

Also it seems JCVD is on the comeback trail has he is gonna star in a new joel silver film
 

NCS

Active Member
Just watched this today guys. I'll give a little positive vs negative review but overall it's quite kind of inbetween his best and worst DTV releases.

POSITIVES

- Romania has never looked so good, for some reason the DOP seems to have picked up Romania on film as a lush and interesting looking country.
- Title sequence is quite good, there are some cool shots of fire breathing dancers interspliced with drugs haha.
- Seagal does some good fights and he pulls of one or two signature aikido moves from his earlier movies which was quite nostalgic and badass.
- The fights don't have many doubles in them, they are quite fast but my only critcism is that the end fight is too easy yet again.
- The other action is okay, the shootouts are nice and there is an explosion which is well filmed.
- The main villain is pretty good and the anti-hero/villain (you'll see) is pretty awesome too.

NEGATIVES

- Seagal is dubbed, not a lot but enough to notice and for some reason he is dubbed saying lines from the trailer which HE actually said in the trailer? What the ****?
- Story is quite boring and in all honesty I found it to be quite sluggish and hard to concentrate in places.
- Seagal's acting is okay but again he's basically playing himself.
- Another dodgy sex scene with a girl half his age, **** knows what he's wearing in it. How come so many young women are with Seagal for two seconds and suddenly drop their dressing gown to the floor and let him fondle them? Something up there haha... Seagal's cock?
- Overall the characters, story, there's something you don't quite care about, just something I can't describe. It's got no... charm?

Overall it's not bad, one of the nicest looking movies I've seen shot in Romania and despite there being dubbing, Seagal sex and the usual bulky clothes it's not as bad as anything from the 2005-2006 period which was truly his most pitiful. Any questions, fire away...
 
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