Friday 9 March 2012

A Dangerous Man (2009)

Steven Seagal plays a guy who used to be in the Special Forces. He plays a guy wrongly accused of a crime, which leads to him losing all that he holds dear to him. He plays a guy willing to help others by kicking the ass of anyone who looks at him with a slight squint. Yes, this is another Steven Seagal movie in which he falls back on the same sketched out plot that he has been rehashing, with varying degrees of success, for the last 30 years or so. To give any more time or space over to describing the plot would just insult the intelligence of both you and me (and I don't claim to be that intelligent in the first place).

Despite the fact that it's just more of the same, A Dangerous Man is yet another of the more recent Seagal movies that ends up being a big surprise - mainly due to it not being a pile of steaming dung. Oh no, this time out we once again get plenty of action and a helping of bone-crunching violence to make everything more enjoyable. And it does the job. Seagal may never reclaim the physique he once had but he has at least gone back to a place that allows him to convincingly show off some decent martial arts moves without calling upon a stunt double every 5 seconds.

Writer-director Keoni Waxman (who also directed The Keeper) puts in plenty of risible nonsense but it's all par for the course for anyone who has watched at least one Seagal movie since the start of the 21st century. The mixed nationalities of all the cast members, the fact that Seagal always seems to get a younger girlfriend with each movie (to paraphrase from City Slickers . . . . pretty soon the guy will be dating sperm), the wise ways of our leading man, etc.

Seagal is as Seagal-like as usual in the lead role but Jesse Hutch, Vitaly Kravchenko and Jerry Wasserman don't do too badly alongside the other, varied, supporting cast members.

Easy to watch and mildly enjoyable, I was about to rate this film even higher than average and then realised that I was just overcome with relief after the many other Seagal movies I have endured over the years.

5/10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Dangerous-Man-DVD/dp/B002MGJSTY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331334322&sr=8-1


2 comments:

  1. Seagal is Seagal in every film. I think he needs to try a more humbling approach to a film like Van Damme did in JCVD. I think that is Van Damme's best performance to date.

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    1. I have to agree with you. Something must have happened in the past few years to get Seagal back on track to some small degree but I can't see him ever being able to skew his own image in the way that Van Damme admirably managed.

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