He looks great, he has become a fine actor and his movies, even his DTV ones are still above average action movies. He has made the courageous step of making a man-in-prison drama movie (The Savage a.k.a In Hell) and has made one of the best action-drama-thrillers of the 2004-2005 season - Wake of Death. WoD was such a fine movie that I actually got angry for not having the chance to see it in the cinema. I thought that it was a much better action movie than a lot of the stuff that goes into cinemas, like the recent The Punisher, which I did not like at all.
I really think that Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are the only ones which are really fighting to keep their careers alive, their pockets full of money AND to give the public QUALITY action movies. Lundgren's The Defender and The Mechanik (both directed by himself) were excellent with The Mechanik being just great. It is a DTV action movie with a small budget and it makes the best of these circumstances. Dolph worked WITH his budget and did not go over the top to try to make the movie look expensive like most DTV action movies try, in a foolish attempt to make people think they are big budget Hollywood action movies. I really wish that I could have seen The Mechanik in cinemas.
I have only recently become a Steven Seagal fan and I have watched ALL of his movies in a very short period of time. Everything up until Exit Wounds is great, just great, but ever since Half Past Dead (which was OK) and Ticker (which is CRAP) he has been making movies of less and less quality.
While I watch Van Damme's recent movies and like them because Van Damme is in them, some of Steven's recent movies I like despite the fact than Steven is in them. Seagal needs to get in shape and make a good movie, even if it is on DTV (direct-to-video). He can still do hand-to-hand combat and very well as proven in the bathroom scene in Mercenary for Justice. I just want him to make a good movie OVERALL, not just 5 minutes of quality in 1h30min of movie.
Another actor who has taken the DTV path is Wesley Snipes. 7 Seconds was OK at best while The Marksman was pure, 100% DOG POO. I hope Detonator is better, but I doubt it...
I hope Van Damme keeps making good action movies. I hope Second in Command is a great action movie (although it was directed by Simon Fellows who made the almost-was-crap 7 Seconds with Snipes) and I really, really do hope that Van Damme's latest movie, The Hard Corps makes it into cinemas.
I really hope Lundgren gets the chance to direct an action movie with at least the same budget as Van Damme's recent ones and that it goes into cinemas.
But my hope that Snipes will get back to his Blade (I+II, as Blade III was AWFUL) glory days and my hope that Steven loses weight (it's not THAT hard, I've done it, I went from 90 Kg to 75 in a little over 2 months) and at least starts making decent DTV movies (not to mention getting back into cinemas), both these little hopes that I've been nurturing for some time are beginning to die...slowly...
