InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

David Love Seagal plays a native American who is corresponding with a very young American girl (?) in a Polish orphanage. This in itself is a bit creepy and he writes things like 'Remember Napolean and be strong'. What?People from the CSA (British readers may envisage the Child Support Agency here) are out to get him but they are no match for an ageing overweight hippie with dyed hair and strange skin tone. Strange voice too – not Seagal's.Meanwhile, over in Poland an even creepier group of old men pick the prettiest girls and take them from the orphanage. These 'actors' are really Polish apparently and so struggle with English, and acting.Seagal flies over to Poland as the girls are being transported somewhere. Ah, the gang v Seagal. Only one winner. Seagal murders one (no police action). He is questioned. But no charges, even when evidence is found linking him to one of the girls who has been killed. The Police inspector just buys him a drink! Seagal invites a young boy into his hotel room and feeds him fruit. He helps the police with their computers before returning to the room and the boy who is now drinking alcohol provided by Seagal. There is probably enough evidence against him now for him not to be returning to America for a long time! But nothing happens. In fact the Police Inspector uses Seagal as a designated driver because she has had too much to drink. Then she returns to his hotel room where the young boy is in another bed. They act like a little family of three for the rest of the film! The coded message in the hors d'oeuvres is brilliant – three round ones, some onions, three square ones, some onions, three round ones. Oh, the round ones have olives on them. Seagal can interpret this as 'this is a trap'. Brilliant. I think he got it slightly wrong - it really says 'this is c**p'In the fight scenes (in fact in all scenes) Seagal moves so slowly he reminds me of The Mummy. And the final scene is really really stupid. It's easy to spot where the stunt double is being used. If it moves, it's the double.The acting in this film is almost universally woeful. Bristolian Nick Brimble provides the only glimmer of talent. Quite possibly the worst film I have seen.

Comeuppance Reviews William "Billy Ray" Lansing (Seagal) is an ex-military, ex-government agent who now spends his time wandering around the woods of Alaska aimlessly and being a penpal to a 13 year old Polish girl. Seems like a natural career transition. When Billy Ray senses something amiss, he heads to Poland to see if Irina (Nowakoska), his penpal, is alright. While there he teams up with local law enforcement agent Kasia (Wagner)...and discovers a nefarious human trafficking operation led by the super-evil Faisal (Schulze). Luckily, he taught Irina how to create and read secret codes (which is perhaps why she signed on to this penpal program in the first place, why else would she?) - so they continue to communicate via code even though they are separated and he's hot on her trail. Will Billy Ray find her and take down the baddies in the process? Seagal's hair in this particular outing is just silly. It's a black, strange-looking mullet of some kind. Perhaps he caught it in the wilds of Alaska where he now lives. By "him" we mean Billy Ray, of course. This movie might even make an ideal double feature with Radical Jack, because that features one Billy Ray Cyrus. And it's not just his odd hair and choice of winter coats that's funny. A lot of his dialogue is overdubbed by someone who is clearly not Seagal. The guy they chose to do this voice-over work has a much higher-pitched voice, not to mention the fact that he speaks clearly and doesn't slur his words. So that's funny, and there are many scenes that are clearly not Seagal in front of the camera as well, most notably his "walking around in the woods" scenes. Did they think the audience wouldn't notice it's some other guy? But while the movie gets off to a very strange start, it eventually falls into a cross between Taken (2009) and the TV show To Catch A Predator, with a little Seagal on top for good measure. (Also, Seagal is some sort of master of disguise in this movie and goes by a bunch of different fake names, one of which is "Nikolai Rachenko". This is also Dolph Lundgren's name in Red Scorpion, 1988. Could this be just a coincidence? But if not, the writers really shouldn't remind the audience of a far superior action star). Schulze makes for a good baddie, and you know he's evil because A. He has evil blonde highlights, B. He plays chess and enjoys fencing and C. He seems to live in an M.C. Escher painting. But don't forget that there's an illegal Polish internet. And to never eat sushi without decoding the secret message invariably buried within the California rolls.But this is another slyly insulting title for a Seagal movie, along the lines of Belly Of The Beast (2003) and Shadow Man (2006). Who's titling these things? And are they getting a good chuckle? And is Seagal getting wise to it? Isn't it a bit too easy -- "Out Of Reach" -- for a sandwich? For a donut? Make up your own fat joke. And the fact that some of the movie was set in Turkey can't be an accident. The filmmakers probably asked Seagal where he wanted to shoot the movie and he just blurted out "Turkey". But odds are he was just going to blurt that out anyway and wasn't paying attention to what they were saying to him. But to be fair, there is some cool camera-work and good shots in this movie. But Out Of Reach needed more Martial Arts. Fencing battles and gunplay is all well and good, but we want to see Seagal do more of his classic slap-fighting. Isn't that why we're all really on board? In all, Out Of Reach is a pretty entertaining entry in the 2000's DTV canon of Seagal. There's enough out-and-out silliness to keep you engaged, and that's more than you can say for a lot of his other work.

callanvass (Credit IMDb) Vietnam veteran Billy Ray Lancing, a former CSA agent who now works on a wildlife refuge in Northern Alaska, has been exchanging letters in a pen-pal relationship with Irina Morawska, a 13-year-old orphaned girl in Poland that he's helping out financially. When the letters suddenly stop coming, Billy heads to Poland to figure out why -- only to discover that the orphanage that Irena was staying in, which is financed by honest -- and unsuspecting -- good-intentioned Samaritans, is a cover for a human trafficking network. Run by a man named Faisal, the operation is worth billions -- girls are sold and traded to the highest bidders from all over the world. Through Billy's letters to Irina, Billy has taught Irina how to use secret codes, which she uses to keep Billy updated on where Faisal is taking her to. That's how Billy stays on Faisal's trail as Billy teams up with local cop Kasia Lato to rescue Irina and the other girls, and bring down Faisal's human trafficking network.Out Of Reach is as I said, not as bad as some of his others but that doesn't mean that it's really any good either. Seagal still has that cheesy dubbing in places that consistently made me groan to myself. Seagal's relationship with Ida Nowakowska (Irena) is supposed to be the main ingredient of the movie, the heart so to speak. I found no real connection between the two, no matter how hard the movie tried to pull it off. The action scenes are pretty non-existent aside from an OK final confrontation at the end, but it's ruined pretty soon afterwords by a shameless sword fight between Seagal and Matt Schulze.Performances. Steven Seagal isn't anything great, as is the case with most of his DTV films. But aside from his horrible dubbing, he at least seems to be trying at points. More effort would have been nice, but considering the depths I've seen him fall, I won't complain that much. Matt Schuzle walks around with a sinister snarl on his face trying to act all menacing, suave, and charming. Unfortunately he doesn't have the charisma to pull it off. The Kid actors are also pretty bad. The boy drinking liquor is a hoot of a time though.Bottom line. If I was to suggest a few DTV Seagal films that didn't fully torture me for you to watch. This would probably be one of them. It's a lazy and terrible movie, but at least it wasn't a torturous experience. Not really recommended, but you could do worse by being a Seagal fanatic I suppose. But that's faint praise.3 1/2 /10

Framescourer There are apocryphal stories that in his later operatic performances, tenor Luciano Pavarotti would not only be given stage direction that allowed him to lean on the set but that other members of the ensemble would help him onto the stage in the first place. This is yet another film in the extended later canon of Steven Segal which requires him to look mean or concerned (it's the same look actually) and the director does the rest. And I really mean the rest. This is acting of the Apocalypse Now school of Coppola shooting little more than Brando's head - Segal even has a typing double (yes, that's a stunt typist!) for using a PC. Dross.The rest of the film uses a cast, plot and script bought at a Hollywood dime store. Segal has done better work since the halcyon days of Under Siege, but only in that spoof advert for Orange. 1/10