Steven Seagal's new action film

[Mulboyne]

Very Funny review of Steven Seagal's new film

Seagal surely qualifies for FG status. And the review mentions Aikido, Samurai movies and Lone Wolf & Cub so we have our Japan references too.

(SPOILER ALERT!)Selected highlights (SPOILER ALERT!):

Unfortunately, OUT OF REACH is one of the shittiest pictures Seagal has ever made...I mean say what you will about Seagal, but this is a guy who used to make real movies. ABOVE THE LAW, HARD TO KILL, OUT FOR JUSTICE... these were well made dumb guy b-movies. UNDER SIEGE, UNDER SIEGE 2, EXECUTIVE DECISION... these were big time slick studio movies with actual skill and entertainment value. How did he get to this point? I don't think it was just from crossing the mafia.
...I am more appreciative of the fat-Elvis period Seagal is in right now than almost anybody on earth, but man he looks scary in this opening scene. I swear to to Christ's Jesus he looks like Bigfoot wearing a bad Dracula wig with a mullet in the back.
...The tagline is "It's a split second between hit or miss." What the fuck does that mean? Nothing! They wrote that one with refrigerator magnets I bet.)
...The girl somehow assumes that Seagal is trying to save her, so she leaves secret codes around, like rearranging a plate of caviar into a secret code for "this is a trap." Seagal decodes it in a hilarious voiceover: "This... is... a tr-- whp? She's here."
...There is only a medium amount of action, all uninspired. The aikido is slow and unimpressive. Nobody does any fancy moves (recent Seagal pictures have had guys doing wire fu but then Seagal punches them when they get too close to him).
...And the climactic fight with the villain is okay because it's a sword duel and he does that classic samurai movie of running past the guy, then standing dramatically with his back turned as the guy starts to bleed and falls over dead. I definitely think Seagal should continue on this samurai theme. After all, he is a legitimate expert on Japanese swords (according to Vanity Fair) and I mean, he's not THAT much fatter than Lone Wolf and Cub, one of the top characters in all of badass Cinema. Maybe he could pull it off, I don't know.

[Taro Toporific]

[
...I am more appreciative of the fat-Elvis period Seagal is in right now than almost anybody on earth, but man he looks scary in this opening scene. I swear to to Christ's Jesus he looks like Bigfoot wearing a bad Dracula wig with a mullet in the back....

Hey, if Seagal can make a chop-socky movie then real FG like Pongi and Company can kick his lard-arse....

[Taro Toporific]

(SPOILER ALERT!)Selected highlights (SPOILER ALERT!):

WOT? How can there be a "spoiler" of something more than spoiled?

Tonikaku/anyway.....
Here are some online videos/Flash of Steven Seagal at his finest....
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/landing/landingIndex.jsp?id=seagal2_burger_down&mature=accept
http://humor.about.com/cs/advertisinghumor/v/ds040704.htm
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/landing/landingIndex.jsp?id=seagal2_burger_down&mature=accept


Mr Seagal has had many great threads covering him here on the FG....

What are your views of Kentaro Seagal?
In case you are still keeping count
Seagal caught up in racketeering trial
[ Poll ] The worst possible action hero President.
"Steven Seagal Joins The Yakuza"

[kamome]

Hey, if Seagal can make a chop-socky movie then real FG like Pongi and Company can kick his lard-arse....

For anyone who doesn't know, I believe that is a picture of Steve Bildermann's wife. Where the hell did you find that, Taro?

[Taro Toporific]

Hey, if Seagal can make a chop-socky movie then real FG like Pongi and Company can kick his lard-arse....

For anyone who doesn't know, I believe that is a picture of Steve Bildermann's wife. Where the hell did you find that, Taro?

Right on Steve's website, next to my pictures my teaching Ninja school and Fg"mercutio' doing his Wang Fu.

Grand-master nimpo sensei and his favorite deshi/disciple

[GomiGirl]

Grand-master nimpo sensei and his favorite deshi/disciple

That HAS to go into the random gaijin shot of the day..

great photo of you Taro!!!

[Mulboyne]

Check out these beserk Seagal catoons on Atom Films

The Steven Seagal Show: Donkey Wounds, The Steven Seagal Show: On Deadly Time and The Steven Seagal Show: Scattered, Covered, Tortured!

[DJEB]

WTF! He's beating up Taro!

[Taro Toporific]

WTF! He's beating up Taro!

Nah. I can see that direct link. http://www.steven-seagal.net/photopost/data/505/17151.jpg

But the site is grrrrreat. http://www.steven-seagal.net/

Also see the 1973 Steven in Japan here.
http://suziwong34.tripod.com/StevenSeagalDedicatedPage/id20.html

[Mulboyne]

Steven Seagal fan, Vern, is back writing on aintitcoolnews.com about Steven Segal's new Japan-set film.

The new one coming February 15th is INTO THE SUN, a Yakuza thriller set in Japan, which is often a good place for Yakuza thrillers in my opinion...It does have a couple things that make it rise above the recent batch :
1. Production value. It feels more like a real movie. The opening scene alone has five elephants and a helicopter. Just 3 elephants probably cost more than that whole pen pal movie OUT OF REACH. It's filmed on location in Japan and Thailand and some of it even looks good. There's one real good shot of Seagal walking through a pachinko parlor and also a real artful overhead shot of a sword fight.
2. Decent cast. Most of them speak horrible English, but they're better than the euro-trash cheeseballs he's been fighting in some of the recent ones...Chiaki "Gogo Yubari" Kuriyama is also in it as the governor's daughter. Her part is, she is standing on a balcony next to the governor for about 15 seconds. (At least they didn't put her on the cover.)
4. Seagal seems to have his heart in it more.... His character sells Japanese swords (something Vanity Fair says he is actually an expert in), he gets to speak more Japanese than ever before, and he gets in a good swipe at CIA disinformation (another ABOVE THE LAW similarity). There's even a reference to his daughter, Ayako Fujitani, when he slaughters a roomful of gangsters while they're watching one of her Gamera movies. And it took me a minute to figure it out but on the end credits, sure enough, that's Seagal singing! I mean I gotta be honest, there is alot of focus on the Japanese characters, and long stretches that are completely Seagal-less. So he is probaly still only working part time. But at least he seems like he's trying when he's on screen, and I didn't notice any parts dubbed over by other actors.
That's the good news. The bad news is because it's a little less shitty it's also a little less fun. It's not a genuinely good b-movie...And the movie takes its sweet time getting to the action. Most of it seems to be repetitive scenes of the Yakuza executing their rivals or Seagal meeting with somebody to ask them if they can find out information for him....It's about drugs but the Department of Homeland Security thinks it's about terrorism so naturally they have the FBI call the CIA to have their best Yakuza expert investigate. I don't get it either but the point is, the expert is Seagal. All he really does to investigate is look at a video and ask a couple people if they know anything, but coincidentally he bumps into a young Yakuza on the street and gets into a fight, beating them all senseless. Next thing you know the poor kid has to cut off his pinky as a "token of regret" and the bad guys are worried about this "American who grew up in Japan... apparently he is a sword master."
I'm glad he's using swords more than guns now, because his current size works better with the samurai image. He still has that weird Dracula wig widow's peak.
...The story includes many of the usual themes of Yakuza movies, so Big Papa meets with a friendly old school Yakuza boss who talks about rules and how these young punks are ruining everything with their lack of honor and their working with Chinese people. The good Yakuza are old guys who are traditionalists and are really into robes and rituals and crap. The bad ones are young kids with spikey hair who drink out of bottles instead of bowls, play violent video games and have one of those robotic dogs. They make fun of the idea of a guy using a sword in this day and age but as soon as Big Papa unsheathes it seems like everybody he runs into has a sword on them. So I guess these kids are out of touch, swords are actually very popular these days...Anyway, the one really standout bit of ridiculousness is the romantic subplot with Nayako (Kanako Yamaguchi), who looks about the same age as Seagal's daughter. The first time you see her she's just some acquaintance of his, a CIA informant he tells to ask around about who assassinated the governor. The second time you see her he's checking up on her info and they call each other "my darling" and you start to wonder wait a minute, what's going on here? Then in her third scene they're sitting in the park and in less than a minute they reveal that they are secretly in love with each other, decide to get married and quit the CIA. Then comes the most clumsy and chaste sex scene you can imagine. She takes off her top and they hug, then kiss. I think even Seagal felt uncomfortable with this scene. He looks like he's kissing a frog.
Shot in Japan, weirdly non-sexual romance between old man and young pretty woman... maybe this was supposed to be his version of LOST IN TRANSLATION, I don't know....INTO THE SUN is pretty boring until the end. Then it turns into a bunch of sword fights and that's when all the good dialogue comes in, usually in subtitled Japanese. When Big Papa pulls out a sword he says in Japanese, "This one is so sharp. I'll use it tonight. This kills very well." When he finds the guy who killed his fiancee he says, "I shall beat you to death!" and then bludgeons the guy with the blade of the sword instead of chopping him. One of his sidekicks arguably gets the best one though: "I couldn't sleep well knowing I hadn't chopped off your balls yet." (Unfortunately he does not get to chop off the guy's balls. Sorry.)

[jim katta]

the guy is the worst kind of bum and is absolutely untalented and unwatchable. he couldn't get arrested in america. what took him so long to figure out he needed to hustle his ass over to japan?

[DJEB]

An unusual number of his flicks have 3-word titles:

Today You Die (in production)
Into the Sun
Out of Reach
Half Past Dead
Fire Down Below
The Glimmer Man
On Deadly Ground
Out for Justice
Marked for Death
Hard to Kill
Above the Law