6/10
Average for the Old Seagal (certainly could have been worse)
7 May 2011
Seagal in Born to Raise Hell seems almost identical to Seagal as himself in his reality series. In some ways this might be a good thing. It means that the film acknowledges that there is no point in asking him to play act stereotypes anymore, like he did in his last film A Dangerous Man. Here he's just being himself. Something else which makes that a positive is the simple fact that the movie isn't really about him. It's more about a drug war between cops and Eastern European mafia. Seagal is just one cop out of a handful. As a screenwriter, Seagal chooses to write him self out rather than in, and subsequently we spend more time with the mafia.

The fight scenes come with a crunchy sound mix, and they allow us to see more Seagal than Stunt man, but they reek of bad editing. the people who direct movies like Born to Raise Hell are not qualified for anything except music videos. this movie implements a very miscalculated Goddardian style of cutting, and a severe overuse of slow motion. We don't need to see a guy ripping a bedroom apart for jewels at five frames per second.

The last scene is kind of touching (at least for a Seagal movie). It was around that part when I realized that the movie is not really about Seagal. That and the fact that we only here his name about five times. I don't wanna mislead anyone however. Born to Raise Hell will probably do the job for whatever fan base the old man has left. He's done better, but he's also done way worse.
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