Watching this near-masterpiece for the first time in a dozen years, I couldn't help but notice a few things.
1) Seagal's accent mimicking is just as bad as the rest of his acting skills. Meryl Streep he ain't. And there are entire scenes when he forgets that he's supposed to have an accent.
2) Gino is really (1) an obnoxious jerk, and (2) an awful cop with no regard for the law, but we're meant to root for him just the same. This is never more obvious than in the scene where he roughs up a bar run by the villain's brother. Gino struts into the bar and immediately humiliates the manager and starts shoving people around, most of whom are just minding their own business. Yet the scene, like the whole movie, is played with the idea that we'll side with this guy no matter how unlikeable he is, just because we've been told that He's The Hero, So There.
3) We're told that the bartender is an old boxer. This could have been the basis of a terrific fight sequence, in which a skilled and experienced boxer takes on a skilled Aikido expert. Of course, it doesn't develop that way. Gino just goads him into taking a swing at him, which he easily dodges, then breaks his nose with his elbow. Incidentally, this "boxer's" punch is so wild and poorly-aimed that there's no way that he won all those trophies, no matter how long ago it was. But it's a Seagal movie, and only Seagal's character is allowed to know how to fight well.
4) The climactic showdown's result is never in any doubt, so there's absolutely no suspense, just like every other Seagal movie. Since there's no chance that Richie's going to lay a hand on Gino, it's just a matter of watching Gino slowly torture Richie until he arbitrarily decides it's time to kill him. Did I already mention that Gino's not easy to root for? The sequence could have been effective. Richie could have learned some fighting skills in prison and had Gino on the ropes for a while. Or he could have gotten the drop on Gino, smacked him over the head with a flowerpot, and kicked him around a bit before Gino recovered and was able to dispatch Richie to the great crackhouse in the sky.
I mean seriously, Jet Li and Jackie Chan routinely get their butts handed to them in their movies, as did Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba before them; why should Seagal be exempt?
5) The usual strategy of surrounding Seagal with real actors backfires again. Rather than helping to elicit a better performance from him, they are inevitably dragged down to his level instead. William Forsythe seems to be channeling one part Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, and one part Burt "Cowardly Lion" Lahr from "The Wizard of Oz," and doesn't really project any menace. Gina Gershon (who really deserves better... will everyone PLEASE rent "Bound" and see what she can do? Come on, it's directed by the guys who did "The Matrix"!) can't get her lines across convincingly, but who could? Jerry Orbach shows up for an easy paycheck and attempts to give this production some dignity, as he did in "Universal Soldier".
6) In the butcher shop, Gino smacks one particular guy around, pins his hand to the wall with a meat cleaver, and THEN punches him in the groin, really REALLY hard. Did I mention that Gino's hard to root for? Incidentally, keep an eye on the actor who plays that poor guy. In some shots, he's writhing and screaming in pain, and in other shots, he's just standing there looking around, apparently waiting to be directed. And I can't help but think that he's probably going to have permanent nerve damage, as is the guy who got knifed in the leg. Being such minor characters, their punishments seem overly harsh.
7) William Forsythe looks a lot chunkier during the final smackdown than he did for the rest of the movie. Either he'd been hitting too many lunch buffets with Seagal during filming, or they just did a really bad job hiding the padding he was wearing under his clothes.
8) To be fair, "Out for Justice" does represent the end of Phase One of Seagal's career. This was the last movie before he started getting really out of shape, although he's already noticeably pudgier here than he was in his earlier movies. This is the last one where the long camera shots make it clear that Seagal is really doing this stuff, and he's really quite impressive here.
And this is the swansong for the hardcore limb-snapping, eye gouging violence that had become his trademarks. In subsequent films, the sadism and gore would be toned down, and that's a shame; at least it's something he did well. Still ahead at this point were 1) the shortest A-list career in Hollywood history with the "Under Siege" films and "The Glimmer Man", 2) the eco-warrior atrocities "Fire Down Below," "On Deadly Ground," and (shudder) "The Patriot"; 3) the washed-up straight-to-video has-been of "The Foreigner" and "Out for a Kill"; and 4) the guy who occasionally stands in for the stunt men and body doubles in "Exit Wounds" and "Half Past Dead". So relatively speaking, Seagal's first four movies represent his Golden Age, a veritable Renaissance of Cinema, if you will. Enjoy.
1) Seagal's accent mimicking is just as bad as the rest of his acting skills. Meryl Streep he ain't. And there are entire scenes when he forgets that he's supposed to have an accent.
2) Gino is really (1) an obnoxious jerk, and (2) an awful cop with no regard for the law, but we're meant to root for him just the same. This is never more obvious than in the scene where he roughs up a bar run by the villain's brother. Gino struts into the bar and immediately humiliates the manager and starts shoving people around, most of whom are just minding their own business. Yet the scene, like the whole movie, is played with the idea that we'll side with this guy no matter how unlikeable he is, just because we've been told that He's The Hero, So There.
3) We're told that the bartender is an old boxer. This could have been the basis of a terrific fight sequence, in which a skilled and experienced boxer takes on a skilled Aikido expert. Of course, it doesn't develop that way. Gino just goads him into taking a swing at him, which he easily dodges, then breaks his nose with his elbow. Incidentally, this "boxer's" punch is so wild and poorly-aimed that there's no way that he won all those trophies, no matter how long ago it was. But it's a Seagal movie, and only Seagal's character is allowed to know how to fight well.
4) The climactic showdown's result is never in any doubt, so there's absolutely no suspense, just like every other Seagal movie. Since there's no chance that Richie's going to lay a hand on Gino, it's just a matter of watching Gino slowly torture Richie until he arbitrarily decides it's time to kill him. Did I already mention that Gino's not easy to root for? The sequence could have been effective. Richie could have learned some fighting skills in prison and had Gino on the ropes for a while. Or he could have gotten the drop on Gino, smacked him over the head with a flowerpot, and kicked him around a bit before Gino recovered and was able to dispatch Richie to the great crackhouse in the sky.
I mean seriously, Jet Li and Jackie Chan routinely get their butts handed to them in their movies, as did Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba before them; why should Seagal be exempt?
5) The usual strategy of surrounding Seagal with real actors backfires again. Rather than helping to elicit a better performance from him, they are inevitably dragged down to his level instead. William Forsythe seems to be channeling one part Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, and one part Burt "Cowardly Lion" Lahr from "The Wizard of Oz," and doesn't really project any menace. Gina Gershon (who really deserves better... will everyone PLEASE rent "Bound" and see what she can do? Come on, it's directed by the guys who did "The Matrix"!) can't get her lines across convincingly, but who could? Jerry Orbach shows up for an easy paycheck and attempts to give this production some dignity, as he did in "Universal Soldier".
6) In the butcher shop, Gino smacks one particular guy around, pins his hand to the wall with a meat cleaver, and THEN punches him in the groin, really REALLY hard. Did I mention that Gino's hard to root for? Incidentally, keep an eye on the actor who plays that poor guy. In some shots, he's writhing and screaming in pain, and in other shots, he's just standing there looking around, apparently waiting to be directed. And I can't help but think that he's probably going to have permanent nerve damage, as is the guy who got knifed in the leg. Being such minor characters, their punishments seem overly harsh.
7) William Forsythe looks a lot chunkier during the final smackdown than he did for the rest of the movie. Either he'd been hitting too many lunch buffets with Seagal during filming, or they just did a really bad job hiding the padding he was wearing under his clothes.
8) To be fair, "Out for Justice" does represent the end of Phase One of Seagal's career. This was the last movie before he started getting really out of shape, although he's already noticeably pudgier here than he was in his earlier movies. This is the last one where the long camera shots make it clear that Seagal is really doing this stuff, and he's really quite impressive here.
And this is the swansong for the hardcore limb-snapping, eye gouging violence that had become his trademarks. In subsequent films, the sadism and gore would be toned down, and that's a shame; at least it's something he did well. Still ahead at this point were 1) the shortest A-list career in Hollywood history with the "Under Siege" films and "The Glimmer Man", 2) the eco-warrior atrocities "Fire Down Below," "On Deadly Ground," and (shudder) "The Patriot"; 3) the washed-up straight-to-video has-been of "The Foreigner" and "Out for a Kill"; and 4) the guy who occasionally stands in for the stunt men and body doubles in "Exit Wounds" and "Half Past Dead". So relatively speaking, Seagal's first four movies represent his Golden Age, a veritable Renaissance of Cinema, if you will. Enjoy.