Steven Seagal: "Clementine" !!
I received this mail today and about "Clementine" :
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From: Mike Schaffnit
Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 11:20 PM
Subject: Steven Seagal: "Clementine"
I have been lurking on your Unofficial Steven Seagal Forum for several weeks; this is one of many sites I have been monitoring for information about "Clementine." I was involved in the filming that took place in the States, and I am curious as to how things turned out. However, I have seen that your fellow forum members don't have any real information. I thought I'd share some with you.
"Clementine" does NOT star Steven Seagal. It stars Lee Dong Jun, and the movie is about that character's loss and redemption. The movie is about the Lee Dong Jun character, not about Seagal or his character..
Seagal has just a minor role. He plays the character Jack Miller. Miller has a total of three fight scenes, although Seagal only shot two of them. The third fight uses a body double and does not use Seagal at all. It should have been possible for the producer (Pearl Star, a Korean company) to have inserted some shots from one of the other two fights into this fight, so that Seagal's face is here, but I don't know if that was done. There is also a VERY brief scene in which Seagal's character and the star's character speak after their main bout, in which they show mutual respect. This is part of the redemption of the Lee character.
Lee portrays a Korean tae kwon do champion who, seven years earlier, lost a world title bout to Miller in an inter-discipline fight (tae kwon do against akido). This loss was due to corruption in the judging, and does not reflect on the fighters' respective skills. Lee's character was disgraced by the loss. The movie tracks his rapid downfall over the seven years after the fight.
Now, for reasons unknown, Miller wants a rematch with Lee. Lee is not interested, but Miller's manager/promoter kidnaps Lee's daughter to force him to fight; and to throw the match.
There was a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme (I think) with the same premise. And I think one of the American Ninja series might also have had it. The good guy is forced to fight, with his girlfriend or relative, who has been kidnaped, to be killed if the good guy wins the bout. The victim is always rescued during the bout, while the good guy is being beaten; the victim shows up at ringside to let the good guy know that he/she has been saved, and this gives the good guy a burst of power and strength, and he goes on to win the fight. This was NOT how the script in Clementine was written; in the script that Seagal approved, his character won. But I don't know what happened in post-production, and I don't know the ending of the fight in the final movie version released two weeks ago.
As your forum knows, the movie had some last minute editing to avoid an "18 and older" rating. There was speculation on the forum about whether Seagal was cut; he was not. The cutting was of a nightclub scene only, in which the Seagal character did not appear. Seagal's part is already so small that if they had cut anything of Seagal, he wouldn't be in the movie at all!
The movie opened in a small number of theaters in Korea on May 21. The movie "Troy" opened at the same time, and "Troy" was a box office success. "Clementine" was not. Based on pre-sales of tickets, "Clementine" wasn't in the top 5 movies that first weekend. I have not yet found the box office figures for "Clementine," but the box office take was very disappointing. "Clementine" closed in the limited number of theaters that it opened in, in less than a week.
I heard that "Clementine" was NOT scheduled for release in any other country, and given the dismissal performance, it is unlikely that it will be released anywhere else. I expect that it will go to video/DVD within a month or two. I don't know if it will become available in the U.S. in a dubbed or sub-titled version. I assume that it will be available in a Korean language version in any community with a large Korean population.
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