The name 'Steven Seagal' may not put the fear of God into many people these days, but when it is preceded by the two little words 'written by' it is something to strike fear in the hearts of stronger men than me. Summoning that peculiar kind of bravery possessed by a masochist equipped with a dozen clothes pegs and a wet shoelace I girded my loins and pressed the 'forward' button on my remote. There was no going back now, like one of Seagal's on screen sparring partners I was to be exposed to every sweaty punch and chop the big (big) man chose to throw in my direction.
I can get back the precious 8% of available recording time KillSwitch occupied on my Sky box, and the 90 minutes I lost watching the film are, in the grand scheme of things, only a minimal fraction of my intended lifespan, but my faith in the movie-making business may never be the same after watching this unholy mess.
The story is rubbish – that was to be expected after we learned who the screenwriter was – but the direction and editing in this film are surely something to be amazed by. The direction varies from pedestrian to excruciatingly bad – we see one bad guy crashing through a window half-a-dozen times, another bad guy collapse onto a table three times, etc. The editor keeps cutting away from the fights to the same headshot of Seagal in which he looks like a mildly interested bystander. In one fight scene, his opponent's bloody scars keeping appearing and disappearing. Another fight seems to go on forever, with all participants seeming to possess super-heroic stamina levels, and you end up watching in stupefaction, not quite able to believe that a movie fight scene is actually boring you.
Seagal plays a Southern cop with issues. It seems he witnessed the murder of his brother when he was a kid. What bearing this has on his present-day pursuit of a serial killer is never really explained. Neither is the identity or motive of the murderer. In fact the incident just seems to have been added to fill out the running time, give the director (whoever he is – I really can't be bothered to check) a chance to show off all the flashy tricks he learned while balancing on top of a dustbin to peer through the window of the local film studies classroom, and to give Seagal the opportunity to come over all broody every now and then.
Seagal was never sylph-like but, judging by the way we are treated to a lot of head-and-shoulder shots but hardly any full-lengths shots of him, his girth has expanded considerably since the 90s. In fact, he doesn't even move when he fights: he just parries his opponents' blow and waits for them to stray close enough for him to fell them with his meaty paw.
