Tweekums
This action movie sees Steven Seagal playing Forrest Taft, a trouble-shooter for Aegis Oil. In the opening scene he puts out a fire at one of their wells; here he is told that the fire happened because company boss Michael Jennings insisted on using substandard parts to save money. Taft starts looking into this and soon Jennings and his henchmen are trying to kill him... Aegis has to open its new well in thirteen days or it loses the drilling rights; Jennings will do anything to make sure nobody interferes with his timetable. After the first attempt on his life Taft is rescued by the local Nanive American tribe. They nurse him back to health then he sets off with Masu, daughter of the chief and environmental activist, to stop Jennings bringing the new well into operation; something Taft knows would lead to an environmental disaster. It won't be easy though; as well as Aegis's own security people Jennings has called in a team of mercenaries.Things get off to a good start with shots of pristine Alaskan wilderness before we see the burning well. Little time is wasted introducing our hero and main villain... then things start to get far too obvious. We see Seagal beating up racist oil workers who abuse Natives at a bar juxtaposed with a scene where Jennings, played by Michael Caine, gives a speech about the company's environmental concerns when it is clear he couldn't care less. As one might expect from a Steven Seagal film there is lots of action; this includes fighting, shooting, many explosions and a man being pushed into a helicopter's tail rotor; this action is pretty good although not as gritty as his earlier films. The scenery is impressive although it seemed odd that one moment they were in barren areas covered in snow the next they were in forests with no snow to be scene! The cast are okay, but all of the actors I recognised have been better in other films; at least Michael Caine's somewhat over the top villain is rather fun and R. Lee Ermey is solid as the head mercenary. The biggest problem with the film is its lack of subtlety with its environmental message; it might as well have been called 'Green Peace: The Movie'. There are numerous heavy handed comments throughout the film but none were as bad as Seagal's speech at the end. The silly thing is the massage could have been got across without these moments which detracted from the action and ultimately came across as annoying, conspiratorial rants from eco-activists. Overall this isn't terrible; it delivers well enough on the action but expects you to be lectured too in the process.
nofunca02
Fisrt at all I'm totally disagree with overall 4 of 10 qualification.
This is a best seller of Steven Seagal. Like it or not.
Many people user their personal hateness to comment. Just because. Because he is ugly, because it was autoproduced, blah blah. That's are not valid arguments.
If you don't like heavy metal, you can't comment about Rock & Roll. So don't do it.
The new spider man movie didn't like me. I think is just another easy to understand teenage movie but I won't comment. There is a brotherhood of kids who feels them self identified and it's ok but if you want to criticize you should use the same rod for all
Leofwine_draca
After making a name for himself with his string of late '80s/early #90s action thrillers - mainly dealing with corrupt cops and tough city life - Seagal went on to bigger thing with UNDER SIEGE. However, after a while, something bad happened. Seagal, an environmentalist, got it into his head to include out-of-place messages to the viewers about the damage we're causing the earth, and this influence can be seen in ON DEADLY GROUND, FIRE DOWN BELOW, and even in his 1996 crime thriller, THE GLIMMER MAN. ON DEADLY GROUND is an odd film - a typical action fest, with some hugely inappropriate content seemingly tacked on in the middle and at the end of the film. The perpetrator of this crime is none other than Seagal himself, unwisely given directorial control for the first time (and probably the last, judging by the poor reception this film received at the box office). While I did enjoy moments of ON DEADLY GROUND as much as Seagal's best work, there are many problems to contend with.The first is the pacing. For an hour, the action content is kept to a minimum, with a single bar fight being the sole beating that Seagal delivers. Happily, he's up to his usual habit of breaking wrists and beating up on bad guys who are bullying an Eskimo for fun. The whispering hard man veers close to torture at one point, as he repeatedly humiliates and forces bone-breaking blows down upon his unwilling opponent. The rest of the hour's time is a literal whirlwind (no scene lasts for more than a few minutes, with the exception of one notable moment, which I'll come to in a second) of corruption and pretty scenery, and a silly moment where Seagal, injured by an explosion, is brought back to life by the Eskimos and goes on a 'spiritual journey'. What a load of rot.Now, I'm one of Seagal's biggest fans, at least of the films he made in his heyday, but this sentimental stuff is hugely out of place in a film like this. In fact, it's laughable, and ruins any fun we might have been having as it's just so darned boring. And pointless. Happily, once it's over Seagal gets down to shooting and breaking up the baddies, and this time around he has more than his fair share of enemies to combat, the body count reaching the mid 30s and being surprisingly high for a film of this kind. In the final act, he infiltrates an oil rig and blows everything up. This part feels a lot like UNDER SIEGE and follows the basic pattern of blow something up, kill some baddies, blow something up, kill some baddies. I love films like this and the deaths are all varied and quite creative, some guys burn, a guy is thrown into the rotors of a helicopter, someone dies in a car crash, other guys are beaten to a pulp. Seagal makes traps for his enemies, just like in the UNDER SIEGE films, and these are bits I love too. The best bit was where he used a plastic coke bottle as a makeshift silencer for his gun.The acting ranges from the hilariously inept to completely over the top, courtesy of Michael Caine as the stereotypical comic book-type villain, who constantly swears and rants at people. He's great. I know how people hated to see this fine actor lower himself, but over the top acting is one of my secret loves (over the top acting that is, not wooden acting). Seagal is his basic self (let's face it, he plays the same character in every film), while Joan Chen is virtually unnoticeable in a supporting role. John McGinley lends solid support as a fellow bad guy, as does R. Lee Ermey as a crew-cut mercenary. ON DEADLY GROUND is by no means a good film, and it's seriously marred by Seagal's self-righteous speech at the end about pollution. Yes, man, we agree, but not here! There is some good action and good fun to be had if you can overlook these flaws. A classic example of a so-bad-it's-funny film.
Robert Durant
Back in the day I used to love this movie, I always thought it was one of Seagal's better films back when he was at least a respectable action star. I didn't realize at the time how much of an ego-fest this movie really is for Seagal. This film is a bad attempt at making an environmental message out of an action flick, laced with Seagal trying his best to out bad-ass himself at every turn. You know a movie is bad when you have your character flown in to a burning oil rig just to press a button. Anyway Seagal does some work for this oil company which it turns out has been using faulty equipment on its rigs including the newest rig which is about to go fully operational. Seagal finds out whats going on but the bad guys try to kill him, they fail, he escapes, gets in touch with his inner spirit, loads up on enough weapons to orbit Arnold Schwarzenegger (yeah I know), kills a few dozen people, blows up the rig, then ends the film with a nice message about working together to save the environment. Okay, whatever.Like I said Seagal uses every chance he can to show us how much of a bad-ass he can be which is just laughable when it happens. Michael Caine stars as the stereotypical greedy CEO of the oil company who comes off so evil he might as well be a Bond villain at this point. There are a few OK action scenes and a couple of funny one-liners but otherwise a forgettable movie and the only one that Seagal would direct. If you are a die-hard Seagal fan and you have to see this movie, go ahead but otherwise its totally passable.
