Being ranked at Number 83 in IMDb's bottom 100 distinguishes this hopeless film as Steven Seagal's worst movie. Although, if you accept that standard you also have to accept that Sin City is the 90th best film ever made, so maybe that's best ignored. Watching it (owning it, in fact, :shameface:) makes you feel like you're joining a special club, the way victims of a terrible tragedy bond together.
The Foreigner centres on this guy (Seagal) who has to deliver a parcel to this other guy. Some other people try and stop him, as they wonder round Eastern Europe to keep the filming costs low. It's never really explained why anyone has any interest at all in the contents of the package, with characters talking at right angles to the events in the film. There's a feeling that the plot of The Foreigner is taking place around the continent, but that the director kept setting his camera up in the wrong place, so crucial events take place off screen while the camera films something banal instead, like a guy stealing a car. Then we just hear people referring to this other event we missed because the film crew were looking at this other thing.
Having said that, there's a lot to enjoy. Steven Seagal is so badly out of shape in this one he never appears in a scene with his coat off. When he smiles, his eyes disappear; when he's riding down an escalator, he folds his hands over his paunch like a pregnant woman. In a few scenes he runs up to a character to deliver a line, but can't because he's so badly out of breath.
My favourite moment was when this black dude in a camel coat rocks up and starts talking grandiloquently in a cockney accent as he tortures Seagal. You know the drill. "This is the excruciating pain of asphyxiation. You know that unpleasant tingling forming at the base of your neck? That, my friend, is the beginning of a blood clot as I starve the oxygen from your brain." It's as though this guy wandered off the set of a Guy Ritchie movie; or more likely that the scriptwriter had just seen snatch and thought the monologues were cool. Anyway. He dies of an exploding urinal while Seagal leaps out the window looking like a sack of beef being thrown into the back of a butcher's wagon.
Other great moments include Seagal burning down this innocent old peasant woman's farmhouse, putting his arms round her shoulders and kindly saying "Go stay at the farmhouse a mile from here they'll look after you". Then he drives off, without even offering her a lift.
Elsewhere, this other assassin guy knows that someone's coming to kill him because while he was in the shower his phone rang and he didn't quite get to it in time. Imagine every time you missed a call, getting dressed in your pimp suit (with hat) and hiding behind the door with a shotgun. What kind of life is that? As for the plot, there's loads of double crosses, although none of them are particularly surprising, as you never have a clue who's supposed to be doing what, anyway. Actually, they might not even have been double crosses. It's kind of hard to tell. There's some important stuff about a plane crash we never see, or even hear about til halfway through the movie but the whole thing seems to hinge on the black box recorder from the flight, which is what's in the package. Oh that's a spoiler by the way, so don't read it.
I couldn't leave this without mentioning one fella at a garage a real minor character who has got the weirdest facial deformity I have ever seen in my life. It's like, it looks like a wart or cyst or something, but when the fella smiles, it kind of rises up under his skin and it looked like it was going to break out of his face. I thought that was going to be a plot point, but it wasn't. That was just his face. Anyway. He was cool. They should make a film all about him.
The Foreigner centres on this guy (Seagal) who has to deliver a parcel to this other guy. Some other people try and stop him, as they wonder round Eastern Europe to keep the filming costs low. It's never really explained why anyone has any interest at all in the contents of the package, with characters talking at right angles to the events in the film. There's a feeling that the plot of The Foreigner is taking place around the continent, but that the director kept setting his camera up in the wrong place, so crucial events take place off screen while the camera films something banal instead, like a guy stealing a car. Then we just hear people referring to this other event we missed because the film crew were looking at this other thing.
Having said that, there's a lot to enjoy. Steven Seagal is so badly out of shape in this one he never appears in a scene with his coat off. When he smiles, his eyes disappear; when he's riding down an escalator, he folds his hands over his paunch like a pregnant woman. In a few scenes he runs up to a character to deliver a line, but can't because he's so badly out of breath.
My favourite moment was when this black dude in a camel coat rocks up and starts talking grandiloquently in a cockney accent as he tortures Seagal. You know the drill. "This is the excruciating pain of asphyxiation. You know that unpleasant tingling forming at the base of your neck? That, my friend, is the beginning of a blood clot as I starve the oxygen from your brain." It's as though this guy wandered off the set of a Guy Ritchie movie; or more likely that the scriptwriter had just seen snatch and thought the monologues were cool. Anyway. He dies of an exploding urinal while Seagal leaps out the window looking like a sack of beef being thrown into the back of a butcher's wagon.
Other great moments include Seagal burning down this innocent old peasant woman's farmhouse, putting his arms round her shoulders and kindly saying "Go stay at the farmhouse a mile from here they'll look after you". Then he drives off, without even offering her a lift.
Elsewhere, this other assassin guy knows that someone's coming to kill him because while he was in the shower his phone rang and he didn't quite get to it in time. Imagine every time you missed a call, getting dressed in your pimp suit (with hat) and hiding behind the door with a shotgun. What kind of life is that? As for the plot, there's loads of double crosses, although none of them are particularly surprising, as you never have a clue who's supposed to be doing what, anyway. Actually, they might not even have been double crosses. It's kind of hard to tell. There's some important stuff about a plane crash we never see, or even hear about til halfway through the movie but the whole thing seems to hinge on the black box recorder from the flight, which is what's in the package. Oh that's a spoiler by the way, so don't read it.
I couldn't leave this without mentioning one fella at a garage a real minor character who has got the weirdest facial deformity I have ever seen in my life. It's like, it looks like a wart or cyst or something, but when the fella smiles, it kind of rises up under his skin and it looked like it was going to break out of his face. I thought that was going to be a plot point, but it wasn't. That was just his face. Anyway. He was cool. They should make a film all about him.