TD
I agree with every one of your points and it is quite refreshing to see that you will allow yourself to be critical of certain aspects of the latest efforts by Steven Seagal. A strange thing to say, you may think, but I find it rather irritating that some people will not hear a bad word said about the big guy, when, basically, there is just so much wrong with what once was right! Basically, the only things missing from his latest straight to video efforts are anything involving a complete and coherent action film.
For me personally, it's getting really hard to justify watching a Steven Seagal movie as an action fan. Although Seagal still has a few years left in him yet, he seems determined to hang onto past glories. Or at least make an attempt to do so.
Everything about the roles he has played in his previous five or six movies is painfully routine, except that he moves slower, fights less, is stunt-doubled more and has at least half of his lines dubbed by a voice actor who doesn't even sound like him! I mean - I can do a half-decent Seagal impression - you just talk in a half whisper with a slightly menacing tone. If the guy has trouble speaking into his microphone, directors should simply cut his lines, as nothing is worse than unecessary dialogue in an action movie, particularly when it isn't even the voice of the 'star'.
Seagal's schtick as a broody ex-CIA agent who turns to spiritualism and then suddenly has to rely on his old skills for one last battle against some dude who has kidnapped his daughter/killed his wife/kidnapped a penfriend (yes, really)/ etc. etc. is definitely wearing thin with me and the bland action sequences and increasing sloppiness of his latest films, masked by a thin veneer of Hollywood polish makes watching his movies a continually unpleasant experience.
I don't really buy his movies expecting them to be good anymore - I buy them because I am a fan and the guy used to make awesome movies. I buy them with the faint hope that one day he will make a decent movie again, but each new one that he stacks up simply marked the next bad movie in a growing line of stinkers that Seagal just can't seem to steer clear of. It apparently hasn't crossed the minds of Seagal and his peers that a lean, character-driven script with high-impact screen fighting set in a simple location is worth more than all the other nonsense they continue to throw into their films. The plot needs to be kept simple, the pace of action continuous, and the stars should always look their best. If an 'action' filmmaker can't meet those standards, then they're selling their audience short and ought to find another line of work.
At the moment, if I was to recommend a decent Steven Seagal action movie to a friend, I would tell them not just to avoid his latest one, but his latest eight! If someone new to the world of Seagal saw any one of his latest eight efforts without seeing any of his earlier stuff, they would think that the movie was total sh*t. That is pretty sad, don't you think? Steven Seagal's last really decent movie was Exit Wounds back in 1999.
I'm pretty embarrassed going into a store to buy the the new Seagal movies at the moment, because they just look so damn lame! The only reason we tolerate this cr&p is because we know how good he once was and how good he could be again if he just put a little effort into his films, starred in a film with a decent script and teamed up with a good director. The true fans cling to the hope that somehow, someday, he will make a movie which is a return to his former glory days of Above The Law, Marked For Death, Hard To Kill, Out For Justice and Under Siege.
I have nothing more to say regarding this. At the moment.
GlimmerMan