Review : Shadow Man

Nick

The Writer
From Amazon

a messy, funny, brain-dead screenplay that made laugh all the time., May 28, 2006

Reviewer: None Whatsoever (Orange County, CA, Land of Big Mortgage Payments) - See all my reviews

so the american embassy in romania is like this, heh? a cia computer hacker, my god, could you believe it's real? the romanian politi are just a bunch of thugs, heh? one of the romanian detectives was shot in the chest could still stand up like nothing happened, walked around and used cell phone, and the next moment when he talked to the rissian mafia, his shirt and suit were all magically dry-cleaned, heh? my god, this is one of the worst screenplays i've ever seen. seagal was trying to make this movie look a bit more authentic but he obviously knew this screenplay was so ridiculous, there were moments he just teased the dialogue a lot. but at least he played this lousy movie from the very beginning to the end, he did try quite hard to do some one-way fightings, guns were no compete to his hands speed and his 'chi'. if this movie could have a better screenplay and a better director, it should be a quite successful movie, but with this lousy elementary-school-level script and a dumb director, seagal again was wasted for nothing. what a shame.
 

supertom

Disgruntled fan!
Amazon is worse than IMDB. Don't listen to that review, it's bullcrap. Just wiat till a proper website gives a review or one of the Seagal members. Amazon and the IMDB boards especialy should be ignored.
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
I've received my preview copy and will watch it tonight.

Tomorrow I'll post my review here.

Peace
 

latinojazz

Well-Known Member
Well, if you read twice you can see that Steven is good in the movie but the plot is a nonsense.

The same of all his DTVs.It isn´t new.

In the gallery pics I see Steven very,very fat, with the same actor of BOTB(The owner of the disco that he kills at the end, after the guy call him dog)

The weight is starting to be a really hard, hard situation for him.Black Dawn and Shadow Man:SuperOverweight.Also in BOTB he was horrible, but he lose some weight.Now, the yo-yo diet problems strikes again!!
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
I receive my preview copy today as well, as you know I always write an extensive reveiw for every Seagal movie released.
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
take-sensei said:
How do you fans get a preview copy??? I want also to receive a preview copy too....

greets take-sensei

Ahh, that's like asking a magician how his tricks work.

My review:

Seagal
As far as I can tell he does most of his fighting himself, although a few moments do show a fight double (but you see that with most actors).

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of ridiculous voice overs, if I'm not mistaken the same from Out Of Reach, and when you see Jack Foster (Seagal) on the back you can definitely see most of the times it's a double.

Over all Seagal puts in a lot of effort especially in the fight sequences (short but plenty), some great moves, high kicks, punches and a silly "Dim Mak" (Bloodsport anyone?).

During the movie you get the feeling that Seagal is trying his best to make this a good movie, but one star doesn't make a movie.

Plot
Written by Steven Seagal, Joe Halpin and some other dude who's name I didn't remember.

In short: combine Ransom (Mel Gibson), MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson), The Rock (Cage & Connery), Belly of The Beast and Out Of Reach.

Seagal plays Jack Foster an ex-cia covert operative (as usual), who now runs a bigtime business.

When he travels to Romania with his daughter and his father in law his daughter is kidnapped and Jack is joined by Harper (a former collegue with the cia).

When he tries to get his daughter back he is chased by the CIA, the Russian maffia and the Romanian police who al think he has a secrect virus formula.

Ahhhhh.............okay, the plot is more an excuse to go from one fight to the other. It definitely had potential if they had worked it out more deeply, now the movie is 92 minutes long. If the screenplay had been deeper, with more background to it all it would probably have lasted about a little more then 2 hours.

Now you get confused about who's who and who works for who and why. I still haven't figured out yet why the CIA tries to kill Foster.

Action
Quite a lot of fight sequences, hand to hand and gun fights. Seagal proves he still gots it.

The chase scene's are on the other hand quite boring and use a lot of outdated shooting methods.

Overall good and plenty of action.

The rest
The camera work sucks big time. It looks if the camera man is an amateur using a handheld camera without "Steady shot". The editing is very sketchy and nervous and uses a lot of camera speed ups which really looks ridiculous.

The actors are true b-class accept the Cab-driver who kidnapped his daughter.

FX are Black Dawn quality, which also sucks. But there aren't a lot of fx.


Watch it. You'll like it.

Peace
 

SimonLustenberger

Well-Known Member
The Stunt double (DIAN HRISTOV) is the same from OUT FOR A KILL, BELLY OF THE BEAST, OUT OF REACH, INTO THE SUN, SUBMERGED, TODAY YOU DIE, MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, HARVESTER and ENEMY OF THE UNSEEN. You can check it out on IMDB. He is alway credited as Stunt double lead.

Are there some arm-breaks in the movie kotegashi?
 

Littledragon

Above The Law
Kotegashi said:
Ahh, that's like asking a magician how his tricks work.

My review:

Seagal
As far as I can tell he does most of his fighting himself, although a few moments do show a fight double (but you see that with most actors).

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of ridiculous voice overs, if I'm not mistaken the same from Out Of Reach, and when you see Jack Foster (Seagal) on the back you can definitely see most of the times it's a double.

Over all Seagal puts in a lot of effort especially in the fight sequences (short but plenty), some great moves, high kicks, punches and a silly "Dim Mak" (Bloodsport anyone?).

During the movie you get the feeling that Seagal is trying his best to make this a good movie, but one star doesn't make a movie.

Plot[/]
Written by Steven Seagal, Joe Halpin and some other dude who's name I didn't remember.

In short: combine Ransom (Mel Gibson), MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson), The Rock (Cage & Connery), Belly of The Beast and Out Of Reach.

Seagal plays Jack Foster an ex-cia covert operative (as usual), who now runs a bigtime business.

When he travels to Romania with his daughter and his father in law his daughter is kidnapped and Jack is joined by Harper (a former collegue with the cia).

When he tries to get his daughter back he is chased by the CIA, the Russian maffia and the Romanian police who al think he has a secrect virus formula.

Ahhhhh.............okay, the plot is more an excuse to go from one fight to the other. It definitely had potential if they had worked it out more deeply, now the movie is 92 minutes long. If the screenplay had been deeper, with more background to it all it would probably have lasted about a little more then 2 hours.

Now you get confused about who's who and who works for who and why. I still haven't figured out yet why the CIA tries to kill Foster.

Action
Quite a lot of fight sequences, hand to hand and gun fights. Seagal proves he still gots it.

The chase scene's are on the other hand quite boring and use a lot of outdated shooting methods.

Overall good and plenty of action.

The rest
The camera work sucks big time. It looks if the camera man is an amateur using a handheld camera without "Steady shot". The editing is very sketchy and nervous and uses a lot of camera speed ups which really looks ridiculous.

The actors are true b-class accept the Cab-driver who kidnapped his daughter.

FX are Black Dawn quality, which also sucks. But there aren't a lot of fx.


Watch it. You'll like it.

Peace



So after seeing it do you feel this is a step forward, is it as good as Into The Sun and Mercenary For Justice or is it bad like Submerged, Out Of Reach, and Black Dawn?
 

DiDa

Super Moderator
Staff member
Thank you for your review kotegashi!! It's bad that there is voicedubbing again and that the stuntdouble is there again. Very strange that they use a stuntdouble for just filming seagal at the back and not for his fightscenes...
But I'm happy that they don't use stuntdoubles for the fightscenes.

I'm still looking forward to this film...
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
Littledragon said:
So after seeing it do you feel this is a step forward, is it as good as Into The Sun and Mercenary For Justice or is it bad like Submerged, Out Of Reach, and Black Dawn?

Definitely a step forward.

It's a bit better then Mercenary For justice and on the level of Into The Sun.

Peace
 

hofmae

New Member
com'on guys... i get always my hand on preview copies but its kind of strange that you already saw the movie... so where did you download it? :)
 

Kotegashi

Master Of Disaster
Staff member
hofmae said:
com'on guys... i get always my hand on preview copies but its kind of strange that you already saw the movie... so where did you download it? :)

Please don't discuss illegal downloading on this site. This could get this site in trouble and we don't want that now, do we?

Peace
 
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