Here, my friends, is a movie where Seagal seems almost like a co-lead. Where he sort of fights a guy once or twice. Playing a sniper is a distressingly convenient way for him to do action scenes without having to do any choreography, martial arts moves, or acting with other actors. This could be a big problem. This sniper obsession is a period within his current Goatee Era. These days his characters always look the same, with too much shit on.
Seagal plays Jake Chandler, the eye in the sky for a group of special ops soldiers on a mission to save a Congressman abducted by an evil Taliban leader. They have some shootouts and a tense hostage exchange and what not. All very small scale, maybe one CGI explosion, but at least the gun flashes are real. There is too much nostalgia, and too many factoids. We need to learn how to live in the present, otherwise what the hell anniversary are we gonna celebrate 20 years from today?
I think you know how I feel about this movie. Mercenary: Absolution. I guess it also played a couple theaters, although I have not heard any reports of anyone seeing it in one. Two things happen here. The new facial hair seems to represent the evil Seagal from another dimension, or at least a slightly darker Seagal. In the opening narration he explains that he has both light and darkness in him. But on closer examination, this gangster-slayer actually is an alternate reality version of the guy from the last movie.
To hold you over, I want to share this song that a rapper named Gutta sent to me. He goes deep. Southpoor by Gutta. Well, it happened. Last Saturday, after 15 years of admittedly weird dedication to anonymity, I went and stood unmasked in front of the Cinefamily theater to publicly share my love of the action films of S. A couple of you who were there kindly told me not to worry, that I looked exactly like Lee Marvin, but on the internet I saw my looks compared to two different comedians.
But now there are a couple blurry Loch Ness Monster type photos of me out there, and Griff says I am not buff and I look like his dad. Giving my reputation a hit like that was not what I had planned for my summer vacation. Headliner Steven Seagal is⦠a guy I wrote a book about. His recent efforts although some might not call them efforts have been worthwhile for my deep Seagalogical analysis, but not too inspiring as works of entertainment.
