Mercenary For Justice Review!
I'll let the admins put this in the reviews section for me. Anyway here's my review.
Mercenary For Justice is unfortunately another let down. Falling underneath Into The Sun and Belly Of The Beast, yet better than his other DTV efforts, this is still a shoddily made film. Yet another of Seagal’s multi picture deal movies, that he clearly is not too keen on doing, and the subject of much legal wrangling. Seagal is again not actually in the movie a hell of a lot. At the same time Seagal looks bored and nears unconsciousness in some moments when he’s not ramming someone’s head down a toilet or smashing Luke Goss through a window.
However, some things are improved over his previous appearances and in particular is the fact that Seagal does his fights himself. The fights are pretty average but the fact that Seagal is present is some bonus. Still though there is the odd moments with stand in’s and also some dubbing again, but since I saw a screener version this may be sorted out for the final release. Similarly the film is poorly put together and badly edited, whilst the music is wildly inconsistent, but it may have been a temp score. Similarly the cinematography is dull (looks like a home movie sometimes!) and needs some sprucing up in editing. Seagal is not alone in the dubbing problem. Some of the ADR work is sloppy (Again may be fixed) and some of the characters sound cartoonishly unnatural. Seagal on some scenes switches alarmingly between his voice and someone elses, while there’s a horrible Seagal impression voice over at the end.
The cast are not great. Luke Goss is about the best in it but he’s underused and having had a good couple of fights with Wesley Snipes in Blade 2, the producers missed a possible face off with Seagal (He gets a quick walloping but doens't fight back). Roger Guenveur Smith is atrocious as the main bad guy, doing a rather camp evil Brit routine. The over pronunciation of every single word from the bad guy Chapel is annoying. I really wanted the smug idiot to die, and at the end I got my wish, and it was granted in some style.
Like Today You Die the film has an almost nonsensical plot which is poorly pieced together, due as the producers said, with problems from Seagal’s behaviour. However I think it’s merely an excuse for lame and convoluted writing because hardly any of the film makes much sense. This still however is miles better than Today You Die overall, because the film doesn’t borrow entire action scenes from other films while Seagal is at least present in the fights. However Don E Fauntleroy still lacks skill behind the camera. Incidentally his sexy wife Lesley Ann Down appears as a newsreader. The action is far more polished and was at least filmed during the shoot rather than stolen from another film, but too often we have to sit through action scenes involving someone other than Seagal when he goes missing from the film, and those moments are dull, despite the appearance of the first red tank I’ve seen ever! Also this is a solid R -rating but quite tame if compared with Van Dammes Wake Of Death and Lundgren's Mechanik, or Seagal's early works.
Overall this is gonna disappoint some fans, while others will be appeased in the knowledge that it is more entertaining than he’s previous two efforts Black Dawn and Today You Die. Thankfully Seagal looks likely to never work with the producers and directors of TYD and Mercenary. Shadows Of The Past has promise, IF it is the proposed WW2 film, plus the New Orleans set Prince Of Pistol’s could also be good.
This is another write off though I’m afraid. **
Fight Doubles- NO
Stock Footage- YES
Stand In- YES
Dubbing- YES
Just remember there is far more promise in Seagal's upcoming movies, while this film is simply rolling over from Last years packed schedule from the big man.