From Amazon:
Whatsup Alligatah?
For an afternoon of light, B-movie, schlock entertainment this movie suffices. I will not here descend into the standard criticisms of almost every Seagal film. I will not lament that this film is not a ¡§return to form¡¨ for Seagal. Whenever I hear critics state this I always think ¡§Return to what?¡¨ Critics say that it¡¦s all been downhill for Seagal since ¡§Under Siege,¡¨ though I personally thought ¡§Under Siege¡¨ was his most boring movie! Anyone else agree? I mean common, we watch Seagal films for the fight scenes, and there was virtually no aikido whatsoever at all in ¡§Under Siege.¡¨ Sure, his acting is bad, but it was always bad. In fact, his acting is part of the charm of his films. Critics always complain that he plays a wooden, emotionless man. Maybe he cannot act, or maybe he is simply adept at portraying wooden, emotionless characters ƒº Seagal does not seem concerned with acting anyway as he seems to think he is portraying himself in his movies. Perhaps he thinks he plays a wide variety of characters, all whom just happen to be ex-CIA/special operatives, etc., and perhaps he does not. People do not watch Seagal films for the acting anyway; they watch them for the same reason people used to watch Bronson films¡Xto see a human terminator annihilate some human scum.
The irritating thing here is that Seagal does seem to think that acting versatility can be portrayed by playing ex-CIA operatives who speak in different accents. Reminiscent of the terrible Russian accent in Half Past Dead,
Seagal here is apparently playing a Cajun, as he sporadically slips into a Cajun accent when saying such peculiar things as ¡§There¡¦s some sick s&!t up in heya alligatah.¡¨ (Why he calls a Brit named Henry, played by ¡§Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels¡¦¡¨ Vinnie Jones, ¡§alligatah¡¨ is never explained.)
What is here irritating is that Seagal, as in his last several films, for some reason often has someone else dubbing his voice. This is highly, highly irritating. In an action movie, an excess of dialogue is usually a bad thing in the first place. And here, as in many of Seagal¡¦s recent films, there is way, way, way too much dialogue and not enough action. If Seagal does not want to dub his own lines then some of them should just be cut, plain and simple. What is irritating in this film is that when we really do hear Seagal¡¦s voice he is trying to affect a Cajun accent. When someone is dubbing his voice for him it¡¦s just a bad Seagal impersonation sans any attempted Cajun accent. The effect is quite humorous.
I will also here not make fun of Seagal because he is not in primo shape. After all, he is in his fifties now. There is nothing wrong with an older action hero¡Xin fact I prefer them. There is also nothing wrong with a hefty action hero¡Xjust look at Sammo Hung. Furthermore, Seagal is an aikido expert, which is about balance and timing, not strength and agility. (One of the most lethal men I¡¦ve ever seen demonstrate aikido was a little Japanese man in his seventies!)
What I will complain about though is that Seagal¡¦s films of late, with the much, much welcomed exception of ¡§Belly of the Beast¡¨ (though that contained an annoyingly high amount of wirefu), have all had little-to-no fighting whatsoever at all. This film, unfortunately, is no exception. There is only one really good fight scene in the film, AND SEAGAL ISN¡¦T EVEN IN IT! (It¡¦s an all-out brawl between an assassin and Vinnie Jones. There is also a nonsensical knife fight between two women that contains some authentic moves.)
As for Seagal himself, his aikido moves, which is why many of his fans watch his films in the first place, are here noticeably lacking. Seagal only has two fights in the whole film and they are both astonishingly brief and hardly worth mentioning. If one blinks one will miss them. The first is with martial artist Gary Daniels, though Daniels here does not get to exhibit any martial arts skills at all.
(Seagal needs to step away from the tendency of reducing fight scenes to two men flailing their arms at each other¡Xthat doesn¡¦t even look like martial arts.) While both fights are brief and over-edited they are both thankfully free of wirefu. (I think we will eventually look back at cinema and realize that the influence of ¡§The Matrix¡¨ ruined American action films for almost a decade!) What is a true shame about both of Seagal¡¦s fight scenes in the film is that both the sequences they appear in could have easily been so much better. The first, in which assassins attempt to overtake a submarine, could have been much more exciting. This fight with Daniels is too brief, choppily edited, and too dark to clearly see.
The only really entertaining thing about the fight is how Seagal randomly bursts out into profanity and then starts nodding his head in the middle of the fight¡Xvery amusing. The only other fight in the film is about two seconds long and is so over-edited that it is hard to make out what is even going on. This scene could have also been so much better¡Xthere should have been a bevy of brainwashed assassins left behind to ambush Seagal, not just one.
The premise of this movie, using mind control to create opportunistic assassins, while not wholly original, is also not wholly uninteresting. A device here is employed to convince men that their wives are about to be killed, pushed off a cliff to be precise, the brainwasher calls them up and says ¡§if you want to help your wife then you need to kill¡K.¡¨ The supporting cast of the film is quite good, especially Vinnie Jones. As some other reviewers have noted, the CGI in this film looks fake¡Xto that all I can say is that CGI in any movie looks fake and that it¡¦s overused in general. The main problem with this movie is that it obviously suffered from severe production troubles. It was originally supposed to be about mutants on a submarine. There are of course no mutants. It appears, by watching this film, that a movie was spliced together after-the-fact by a crew of editors getting paid overtime. The effect is like watching a video game, though this is still one of Seagal¡¦s most entertaining films of late.
P.S After careful consideration and reading this Review I am actually thinking about renting this movie after all. Maybe make a night of it along with Jack Frost and Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman. Bad but Humorous Cinema
--on the movie and/or Steven, Craig's #1 rule is *No personal attacks.* That doesn't necessarily mean vulgar language or threats, but also includes telling another member personally they're wrong for their opinion, or a member telling another they're tired of them expressing their opinion, or that they shouldn't keep posting it. 
