Mercenary for Justice
by Don E. FauntLeRoy
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Actor: Jacqueline Lord, Luke Goss, Michael Kenneth Williams, Roger Guenveur Smith, Steven SeagalDirector: Don E. FauntLeRoy
Brand: SEAGAL,STEVEN
Writer: Steven Seagal
Producer: Avi Lerner
Producer: Boaz Davidson
Writer: Danny Lerner
Writer: Joe Halpin
Writer: Les Weldon
Writer: Steve Collins
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Mercenary for Justice
DVD Review: The amazing disappearing accent
Summary: 3 Stars
The first thirty minutes of the film will make your head spin as several plots are thrown at you all at once. It opens with a high CIA agent working with a mercenary boss to help topple an African government with the use of expendable mercenaries. They do it so they can get rich off of oil and diamonds (oh brother...) but things go wrong when French commandos (who are about as well trained as Vietcong, apparently) are flown in to stop the mercenaries from toppling the government. In response some of the mercenaries kidnap the French ambassador, (easily taking down the THREE guards...) but this fails when the truck carrying the ambassador and his family is blown up. The mercenaries are left on their own and escape on a helicopter. Guess who's among them? Steven Seagal himself, whose character is described as the "most decorated hero of the Gulf War." (HA!)
Cut to a while later. Seagal is comforting the widow and son of one of his fellow mercenaries who died in the last battle, and then he gets abducted by the mercenary boss he used to work for. It's then revealed that the mercenary boss has captured the widow and son of Seagal's buddy to convince Seagal to work one more job. It turns out that the son of a Greek arms dealer has been arrested and is being transferred from a top South African jail to Ft. Leavenworth. (huh?) The mercenaries have been hired to break him out at any cost. Meanwhile, an old romantic fling of Seagal has been captured by the same CIA operative as before and is being used to trap Seagal so he doesn't reveal past and present scandals.
Whew! OK, there, it took me two long paragraphs to describe the first thirty minutes.
Any way, Seagal soon turns things against his opponents, teaming up with old buddies within the group and sneaking into a bank to reveal the truth about the corrupt CIA agent and mercenary boss AND saving his partner's family. It all works out because Steven Seagal is clever and a heck of a fighter...um, wait, scratch that. It works because the script says it does, and actors have to follow the script.
"Mercenary for Justice" has about one thing going for it: lots of action, and admittedly it's often entertaining. If you want to see dead bodies get thrown around (literally) then this is the film for you. It's definately a lot more entertaining than some of Seagal's modern works, like "Out of Reach." That's the ONLY reason I've given it three stars. If it had not had that, it would have been given one star for it's many faults. One is the acting, which is terrible across the board. The one that stood out the most was Luke Goss, who plays the mercenary boss like he's trying to imitate Richard Harris. Then of course there's Seagal, who just flat-out STINKS in this movie. I can shrug off his trademark emotionless voice, but apparently he was supposed to have a southern accent in this film. I don't really know, because in some scenes he has it and in some scenes he doesn't. It's like they filmed those scenes with the accent first then said, "Uh, yeah, you're not doing it too well, just forget it," and continued filming. Ironically the best actor in this whole thing is Adrian Galley as Bulldog - ironic because he goes through half of the movie not saying anything.
Besides the acting, there's the whole moral issue with this movie. Someone reviewing another Seagal film brought up the "cover rule" of action movies: a hero in an action movie is only considered the hero because he's on the front cover. You get some sense of that here. Seeing Steven Seagal take out wave after wave of French commandos may be forgivable since he's defending himself, but later on when he's killing all these South African policemen you're left wondering if his character really has any sense of life. Think of this: what if he had told the South African police chief (who is portrayed as an uncorrupt fellow) about the CIA and mercenaries, and set up a trap at the jail and allowed him access to the bank. That way less people would have died, as oppposed to what Seagal did, which was allow a lot of South African police at the jail to become fodder and then take out a lot more police at the bank. Considering the police are NOT bad guys, but just cops doing their job and hunting down who they think are dangerous criminals, doesn't this all seem a little dark? And then we're supposed to feel warm and happy that he would go save his buddy's wife and son? Why doesn't he just use them as pawns in his scheme as well? Oh yeah, I forgot, because then that would be "evil."
If you get the DVD then make sure to see the "Making of" featurette. Director Don E. FauntLeRoy's stumbling over his opening comments ("Steven Seagal...he's like an idol man, he's an idol...") answered a lot of questions I had about the film's style. Even funnier are all the comments the crew and cast give to Steven Seagal, namely about how amazing he is. One of them says that Seagal's always trying to find a way to make the film better. (he doesn't do a very good job) Another one says something along the lines of, "A lot of action stars are fake, but Seagal is for real. He's a real kung fu artist." GIMME A BREAK!! In most of his recent films, any time a simple stunt like jumping over a fence or sliding down a rope is filmed, a look-alike replaces him. Not to mention that most of Seagal's moves nowadays consist of grabbing a guy by the arm and punching him (this happens about ten times in this movie alone) and most of the time it only looks like it works because the director has filmed it to. This is all combined with the fact that Seagal has packed on a lot of weight since his early days, and it's just not as believable to see him beating up people twice as young and most likely just as strong as he is. It's also not very believably to see young female characters swoon over this large, mumbling, mossy-haired, 50-year old man.
Consider this: Jackie Chan is about Seagal's age, yet he's in tip top shape. He also does all his own moves - in the movie "Operation Condor" there's a scene where he jumps over a tall gate with only the use of his legs - and he really did that! He doesn't need someone to come in and replace him with all the camera shots changed so the audience doesn't catch on. I have to also admit that the stuff Jackie Chan does in his mid-50's is way more exciting and even more amazing than stuff he did in his 20's. So I don't want to hear, "Go easy on him, he's old" or "He's really talented!" Once upon a time he was amazing, now it's no longer believable. And yes, I will freely admit I'm not in tip-top shape myself, but you don't see me in movies beating up tons of people.
As I said before, you should only watch this movie if you want to see a corny action flick. It delivers on that regard. If you go expecting a good movie or you're hoping Seagal's come back from his direct-to-video hell, I can only point at you and laugh.
Description of Mercenary for Justice
A hired fighter is sent on a mission to break into a high security prison in Eastern Europe and free the son of a notorious drug lord.Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 18-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD
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