Archive for Straight To Video

A Dangerous Man

A Dangerous Man

A Dangerous Man (DVD)

Directed by: Keoni Waxman

Written by: Keoni Waxman

Produced by: Deboragh Gabler

Starring: Steven Seagal, Marlaina Mah, Vitaly Kravchenko, Terry Chen, Jesse Hutch

Run Time: 94 Min

Action, action and more action! That’s what I want when I watch a Steven Seagal movie. I don’t want any of that artistic stuff, a plot full of learning about the inner child of characters nor do I want a sappy love story. When it comes to cheesy action movies all I want to see is ass kicking, sexy women and a fast plot where I don’t have to think. A Dangerous Man is exactly what a Seagal movie should be.

The story starts off with Shane Daniels, Seagal, attacking a random mugger who attempted to rob his wife. Soon after the incident police find the mugger dead and Shane is interrogated about his past in the Special Forces. The evidence is damning and Shane is condemned to a life of prison. While he’s serving his sentence tragedy strikes as Shane’s young sexy wife leaves him to move on with her life. After 6 years of hard time, Shane’s luck changes and he’s released when neglected DNA evidence proves he wasn’t the killer. This scene is just long enough to get all of the information we need about the character for the movie.

Now that the first 7 minutes of the movie is over, including the credits, Shane is back on the streets and trying to make a life for himself. Being alone in the world is hard for a recently released convict, as one can imagine, and Shane finds himself dealing with his problems and loneliness at a local liquor store. As Shane leaves the liquor store with his cheap bottle of bourbon he’s confronted by two thugs looking for some easy money. Shane doesn’t take any of their guff and after some colorful words, gives them a lesson in the art of implanting his fist into their faces.

The story continues, we’re about 10 minutes into the movie now, we find Shane reminiscing about his former wife in an almost empty park (some car thieves stop there to use the bathroom). His wife really is way too sexy for him, which explains why he’s so lonely as he remembers has flashbacks of their love. Aside from being dangerous, Shane is also very emotional.

Alas, his time alone is too good to be true when a police officer pulls into the parking lot and begins to question some Asian Mafia gentleman for an unknown reason; maybe it was speeding, in the same park where Shane is trying to sort out his emotions. We all know what happens from there, the mafia members kill the police officer and attack the car thieves. As a peace loving man, Shane sees it as his duty to get involved and thoroughly explains why violence is wrong by giving the mafia members some tough love; like any good step dad would give his red haired son.

After a quick search of the mafia member’s cars, Shane finds a duffle bag full of drug money and another sexy girl in the trunk. Shane, being the humanitarian that he is, decides to help the woman get back up on her feet and save her family from the Asian Mafia while keeping the drug money for himself as kind of a payment for his services. And this is still in the first 20 minutes!!!!

A Dangerous Man is a far cry from the movies he’s released in the past few years. The film quality and production is better than some of his movies that actually made it into theaters in the past. The plot is fairly bad and doesn’t make very much sense for example; the Chinese military is trying to capture a man who did the accounting for their large drug organization and the most of plot revolves around saving him. There is some dubbing in the movie but it’s not nearly as bad as the sound was in one of Seagal’s recent movies called Kill Switch, where a majority of camera work was shot from behind Seagal to cover up the bad dubbing. For the most the action scenes were done well aside from some bad editing here and there.

This movie has everything, the Asian Mafia, the Russian Mafia, corrupt police, the Chinese military, strippers that can’t dance and of course lots of action. The movie doesn’t go into any real depth since that would get in the way of the action but honestly what do you expect from a Seagal movie? When you watch the movie you call the main character Steven Seagal instead of the characters real name, these kinds of movie aren’t about the characters or story as much as they’re about the star.

A Dangerous Man is made for a younger male audience and isn’t the kind of movie I’d recommend for women, since some are objectified in the movie. For those people who like Steven Seagal movies this movie is a solid mix of everything that we’d expect from him but for the people who like movies with a well laid out plot, realistic circumstances and a story that is believable the movie scores a meager 1.5 out of 5.

Rating for Steven Segal fans: (4/5)

Rating for everyone else: (1.5/5)

Universal Soldier: Regeneration

Universal Soldier:  Regeneration
Directed by: John Hyams

Written by: Victor Ostrovsky

Produced by: Craig Baumgarten, Moshe Diamant, Peter Hyams

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Andrei Arlovski

Run Time: 97 min

Jean-Claude Van Damme is back in the latest instilment of the Universal Soldier series and is…. well the same he always was except older. Who could resist a straight to dvd movie starring not only Van Damme but Dolph Lundgren and UFC’s Andrei Arlovski. This movie has all of those old great “actors” that I watched when I grew up and spent countless nights staying up all night eating bad fast food, drinking soda and watching bad movies.

The story takes place in modern day Russia where a separatist group has kidnapped the president’s son and daughter and is holding them for ransom at the famous nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. If that isn’t scary enough, the group has threatened to destroy what’s left of the reactor which would doom Russia to a nuclear holocaust. As a response the US military reactivates the secret Universal Soldier program in order to save Russia from the separatist group and nuclear disaster that would bring generations of mutated children with amazing math skills (well the mutants aren’t part of the movie but it should be).

Luc Deveraux, Van Damme, has been out of the Universal Soldier program for years and is in the process of being rehabilitated in order to be reintroduced back into society. Luc’s progress seemed to be going well even though he can’t remember what happened to him the day before, suffers from swollen knees and is confused most of the time. The army knows that Luc is the only man for the job, after their first plan fails, and his rehabilitation is stopped so he can save the world.

All famous heroes need an insurmountable super villain which is where the NGU, played by Andrei Arlovski comes in. The NGU is the newest super soldier created by a mad scientist who dreams of taking over the world. The NGU is emotionless which makes it an easy role to play; all the Arlovski has to do is fight and walk around and look tough, which he does well.

I expected the action to be slightly better than it was and the main draw of the movie was seeing my favorite B-movie stars in action. You may have noticed that I didn’t mention Lundgren’s role and that wasn’t by accident; his role was pathetic and it seemed as if it was there just to get his name on the credits. In the end this movie wasn’t as bad as it could have been but it wasn’t very good either but that’s why the movie is straight to DVD. This movie is best to watch when you’re in the mood to relive staying up all night and watching movies on TBS when you were young.