LastingAware
The greatest movie ever!
Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Stephan Hammond
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
mazec666
Continuing with Seagal Month, "Out for a Kill" from 2003 is among the few movies he's made for Millennium Films. Budgeted at $14 million, this has better production values than "Flight of Fury" and that's not saying much. Clocking in at around 90 minutes, this feels like a four-hour biology lecture.Our portly Buddha white boy plays Robert Burns (not the late production designer on the original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"), an unorthodox professor who wears leather coats on digging expeditions because he's cool. Or he might be covering his enormous gut whichever you figure out. After discovering ancient Chinese artifacts, Seagal finds himself chased by a million bad guys in a poorly-choreographed car chase where his female partner is murdered. He reaches the border and gets framed in this low-budget rendition of "Midnight Express." While spending a short amount of time in prison, Seagal befriends a stereotypical black guy who doesn't have anything to do with this film. Upon his release Seagal reunites with his wife whose also forgotten about and is killed in a superimposed explosion. Predictably, Seagal goes on a violent killing spree breaking the arms of every nameless Chinese extra in a series of over-the-top fight scenes that are desperately mimicking "The Matrix." The film is padded with scenes of the villain and his men sitting in a long table with subtitles and title cards galore reminding us of their dastardly deeds. "Out for a Kill" is sleazy-looking for a direct-to-DVD action film and does it show. The computer-generated effects are the most horrible I've ever seen and so are the unconvincing backdrops. I swear, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" has Oscar-caliber FX and producing design compared to this. And the editing is like Paul W.S. Anderson on cocaine. The below-average but great-to-laugh-at fight scenes aren't any better. The good news is Seagal is doubled much less. But the bad news is that they are poorly edited to the max. However, Seagal's performance doesn't fare better as his voice constantly changes from his own to someone else. Also noted is that Seagal is filmed in the shadows to hide his oily skin and multiple chins. That is a prime example of laziness at its highest form. The other actors are even worse. Michelle Goh may be attractive but her performance is awful, awful, awful. Corey Johnson is only in the film until he's bumped off and collects a paycheck.Did I mention that "Out for a Kill" is terrible? No. But it is. And at least it wasn't a stock footage movie.
Scarecrow-88
Chinese crime families from major cities all over the world are uniting to control the marketing of drugs, eliminating any competition(as we see in the opening regarding a massacre in a Bulgaria strip club). Steven Seagal stars as an archaeologist(!), Professor Robert Burns, a recipient of the prestigious Winthrope award for uncovering important Chinese artifacts. Burns gets caught up in the midst of an attempted drug smuggling operation with the Chinese crime family using his archaeological dig recovering Chinese relics at the China/Kazakhstan boarder as a front to traffic heroine in the centuries-old statuettes. His assistant killed by gunfire, Burns makes it to the boarder, but is arrested for his possible involvement in smuggling the drugs in his artifacts. Released, Burns has revenge on his mind, but when Wong Dai(Chooi Kheng-Beh)sends his men on an errand to kill Robert's wife, the scorned professor will surely wreak vengeance on all who took away everything he ever cared for. Working with Hong Kong DEA agent Tommi Ling(Michelle Goh), and her American partner Ed Grey(Corey Johnson), Burns will annihilate each member of Wong Dai's crime family, setting his sights for the ringleader, who is stationed in Paris.Globe-trotting action adventure vehicle for Seagal has his martial arts Buddhist archaeologist taking out Chinese druglords in Chinatown, Bulgaria, and Paris. Like other 2003 action flicks, Seagal is able to look good thanks to careful camera angles, editing, and stunt work. We all know he can no longer propel himself in the air or move across a room like a gazelle. Good use of slow motion allows Seagal to obliterate opponents in a manner that seems quite authentic. I will say that there's one sequence, concerning a heavy dependence of wire-fu where Seagal's adversary can twist and turn in mid air, not to mention crawl across walls, looks positively ridiculous, quite laughably staged. Like most of his action flicks in the 2000's, Seagal's one-man army can go wherever he pleases, leaving an alarming string of dead bodies, without anyone even attempting to investigate him. He can go to Bulgaria and Paris without a hitch, despite his house being bombed and wiping out a number of men in a New York City restaurant in front of witnesses. Where Seagal is at his best is when he has those fast hands moving, blocking punches, and landing blows that send his foes hurling in the air and through objects. There are plenty of guns firing and thugs for Seagal to vanquish, and his Robert Burns goes through the motions with relative ease. The members of the Chinese crime gang all have nicknames and specific writings on their arms which forms a riddle, for which Burns soon interprets at the end. Well, on the bright side, at least there isn't a kidnapped daughter Seagal must rescue this time.
I_John_Barrymore_I
It should be one of those films where by the time it's over you couldn't name a single character, yet Steven Seagal shares a name with the most famous Scottish poet so you can't help but remember at least one.It's surprisingly well-lit for a post-millennium Seagal offering but this is a mixed blessing. While it's pleasing to see him in something other than a face-only Col. Kurtz impersonation, the fact he's (reasonably) well lit merely makes him look like what he is - fat. The fights are cumbersome and not a single blow impresses.Seagal's lines have been dubbed - poorly - and there's a noticeable difference in his voice depending on whether we can see his face or not, and almost everything he says when off camera sounds like it was read into a dictaphone on a lazy Sunday afternoon on his couch after a few too many doobies. Still, he's not the only one. MC Harvey, a former member of UK rap collective So Solid Crew, suffers the indignity of having his film debut dubbed entirely by an actor with a more masculine voice. After they meet towards the beginning of the film he shouts after Seagal's character "Don't forget about me Burns!" It's the last we see of him.But aside from one bad guy who inexplicably develops superhuman powers, some dreadful CGI and pointless green screen work, that's about the only amusement the film has to offer. The lead villain is so over the top it's outrageously hammy even by cheesy action movie standards. Delivering lines like "I have decided we must put an end to this professor" it's the kind of performance that would be laughed out of a Power Rangers audition. Having said that, he explains the plot so many times it's hard not to wish your manager were more like him for clarity in the workplace's sake.It plays out almost like a video game, with ten bosses being defeated one by one until the final showdown but I promise that's not as much fun as it sounds. That final showdown is a complete non-event and an embarrassment even to a film of this quality. It's painful - although not impossible - to watch, and even die-hard Seagal fans will struggle to find anything of worth in this tedious, derivative bore.
bbc100
Silly plot to start with, a whole cross nation Chinese criminal organistaion vs a kicking ass invincible professor who kills each one of the criminals to save the day. Everywhere he goes, the criminals fear him, runs away from him, avoids to put up a fight and eventually he marches straight into their headquarter and beheads their leader with one accurate throw of a Japanese sword.Sloppy action, fake wirework, CG effects, superhuman strength, we sees Steven Segal tossing people in the air and giving them broken arms to whoever attempts to fight him...Stereotypical Chinese villains eg. deadly Shaolin monks employed as assassins, mythical Chinese cults, gangster tattoos on every gang member.....Lack of depth in character background and a very very weak storyline. Steven stars as a professor on Chinese studies, which suddenly turns out also to be a martial art expert with a criminal record? In what significance does his female partner, which the only thing we've been told is she's a Policewoman from Hong Kong relates to the plot? What is on with the whole Chinese criminal network sitting in the same room, discussing same own boring conversation throughout the whole film until Steven Segal finds and kills them? This is just a absolutely retarted movie.....