El mercenario: Absolución

"John Alexander" (Steven Seagal) is an assassin who has been very successful with what he does for a living. So capable in fact, that he now believes that he needs to atone for the many bad things he has done over the course of his life. He gets this opportunity following a successful contract hit in Ukraine when he finds himself caught up in the middle of a situation involving a prostitute named "Nadia" (Adina Stetcu) and a murderous, sexual pervert with enormous influence who goes by the title of "the Boss" (Vinnie Jones). However, what he doesn't fully appreciate is just how influential "the Boss" actually is and because of that he becomes a target himself. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie actually started off pretty good. Unfortunately, it proceeded to get more and more unrealistic as the film progressed with several scenes involving both John Alexander and his friend "Chi" (Byron Mann) willingly throwing down their firearms in order to defeat their fully-armed opponents using only their martial arts skills. Naturally, I could understand this scenario if they were caught off-guard or if they had exhausted all of their ammunition while exchanging gunfire. But professionals don't go to a gunfight armed with just a knife or their bare knuckles. It just doesn't happen. That said, those who enjoy martial arts action for its own sake might really like this movie. But those who want a semblance of reality might be a bit disappointed. In any case, while it wasn't necessarily a bad film, it could have been better and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

With a trend of increasingly faster and more brutal action choreography in recent years, there's not much space for Seagal's large frame, no matter how many wrists he snaps. For an action movie, the action scenes themselves are far from believable, a lot of choppy editing and excessive use of doubles make it laughably bad. At least the trademark of Seagal's movie is still here; his near superhuman portrayal, perfect accuracy and untouchable in fight, even though what he does is just randomly waves his hand.

Seagal is tasked to wrap up a potential terrorist by his handler. After an unfortunate event he finds himself protecting a random girl. This is truly an absurd script, the girl literally falls on his laps and then Seagal laments about his existent in his usual erratic mumbling. None of the scenes involving him are convincing, either it's the action or acting. It's just awkward like seeing a grandpa flirt with a girl or a veteran operative waltz in a room and not getting shot because he's wearing plot armor.

Byron Mann and Vinnie Jones are also present, both of them are decent. Byron Mann performs much better despite being a sidekick character. Vinnie Jones is looking grim as always, even though his appearance is relatively short in the movie. The rest of the cast are stiff. At some points the supporting characters sound like they are reading or even spelling the script. Needless to say, the screenplay of elaborate syndicate is nowhere near engaging.

Action is brutally weak. Seagal would do some gestures that probably resemble fighting and the camera cut off to stuntman flying across the room. Majority of the scenes are also played by doubles, it's quite apparent when the shot cuts to their back that not all of the actors are involved in the stunts. It's even worse when Seagal does this transparent excuse of action choreography in a movie where he's supposed to lead.

One must wonder how much longer can Seagal relies only on his fading name because story and choreography are flimsy even by standard of ten years ago.

This starts with a man called John Alexander undergoing contemplative brooding introspection:

"I've been a bad man my whole life . If I can do only one good thing in life then that would give me absolution"

Considering John is played by Steven Seagal a more honest appraisal might be:

"I've been an abysmally bad actor my entire life . If I could only make one half decent movie then that would be absolution for the audience"

Unfortunately ABSOLUTION is not that film and seeing the physical appearance of Seagal tells us that it's never going to happen either . It's something of a shock the way Seagal looks nowadays . Try and imagine Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW with too much artificial hair and that gives you a vague idea of what happens if you're an action movie star who doesn't visit the gym very often . You do wonder how SS is going to kick some ass in his present condition . This is easily explained - he shoots bad guys and leaves any jumping and kicking to his cohort , or failing that a stunt double with his back to camera . It's not absolution that is required but lots of salad and exercise

The film starts with SS being given a mission to eliminate "This Afghan national working for the Iranians and with ties to Pakistan" It's at this very early point alarm bells start ringing that the geo-politics here might be wrong since the Persians and Pakistanis have never really been allies . That said this Afghan national isn't really the main villain , it's a character played by Vinnie Jones and when you're watching a film where Jones gives the most impressive performance that might explain why ABSOLUTION has gone straight to DVD

Without any spoilers as a direct to DVD film this is one of Seagal better efforts. Please don't listen to the critic's Technically it's a well executed film. Seagal and Mann make a great team together and whilst Vinnie Jones is not in the film a great deal he's a very believable bad guy because quite frankly playing psychos is what Vinnie does best.

I rated It an 8 as an action film because the story and pace and action kept me entertained.

I do recommend this to fans of Seagal.

Please view for yourself and decide.

I don't get how this got to theaters.

Last year, Jean-Claude Van Damme had two movies in theaters, Welcome to the Jungle and Enemies Closer, which were pretty decent, mostly because the muscles from Brussels stepped (slightly) out of his element to give us something different than his signature kicks and it worked to make a good movie.

I was expecting the same thing from this Seagal movie (after all, when was the last time this guy had something that did not premiere on Netflix?), but as soon as the movie open with a stupid narration about Seagal being a bad man who does bad things and he's looking to redeem himself with one good deed, I knew this was not that movie.

If any of you are aware of the old fat Seagal era on DVD, than you have herd Steve do this speech in every straight-to-video flick he's ever made. This movie could not be more formulated to the old fat saga, (takes place in Eastern Europe, he plays blues guitar, etc…). The only exception was that the strippers in the film were not naked. Maybe this is how the movie got into theaters?

Don't get me wrong, it's a fine action movie, especially if you at least like Seagal, but I was hoping since this was the first Seagal movie I've seen in years in a movie house, that he would do something different or that it was a return to Seagal back when he was thinner and ran like a girl, but it was neither.