Exit Wounds

Crrrrunch!!  Is there anything so satisfying as the sound of Steven Seagal breaking the bones of the bad guys?

Yes, I'm a fan and I have to admit that Seagal's movies range from so-so to good (the only one I've seen that I plain don't like is Hard to Kill), but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a couple of reasons.  One is that his characters (and really aren't they all pretty much the same character) have a clear sense of right and wrong and there is never a moment of self-doubt.  The other is the way in which he dispatches with the bad guys.  Rarely does he engage in the type of long, drawn out hand to hand combat the likes of which we saw at the end of MI2, where two men fight for like fifteen minutes, enduring kicks to the face.  No, he pretty much grabs an arm and snaps it like a twig, takes out a knee, crushes a person's face, or for a climax, impales a bad guy on some sort of stationary object.

I admit, it makes me cringe at times, but the people he encounters rarely end up picking on anybody else.

Exit Wounds is a little too over the top in it's plot.  There are a whole lot of cops being way too bad (can you say Rampart?).  The worst of them survive encounters that you'd have to be Superman (or Seagal) to endure, but this is just to keep them around so they can get their comeuppance in the end.  The premise of one of it's main characters being a zillionaire Internet entrepreneur from the ghetto turned hi tech vigilante, and by the way he can survive a toe to toe encounter with Seagal, is somewhat preposterous.  And, there's a bit in a rage management class that's pretty flat, along with some poorly inserted cliché dialog, like saying "You're fired!" after shooting a major bad guy.  That line worked in RoboCop and should be retired.  Fortunately, Seagal's character did not utter the line which preserves his credibility some.

There was also some over-the-top martial arts sequences that suggest that the film was trying to be the tough guy cop film on the one hand while trying to capitalize on the recent spate of martial films which allow for superhuman style jumps, etc.

I went in expecting what I got out of the film, though.  I suspected it would not be Seagal's best and it wasn't, but I did get what I wanted from the movie.  There was a generous helping of Seagal-dispensed justice, with his expedient combat style, and no-nonsense morality.  But, I was glad I chose the pre-six o'clock show and didn't pay full price.

4-1-2001