The Seagull Chronicles: DTV Era Vol. II

The legend never dies as we continue our Seagal-a-Thon in The Seagull Chronicles. If you’ve missed it by any chance, check out the first part of my pilgrimage to the wonders of Sensei Steven Seagal’s straight-to-DVD filmography. The well is bottomless so let’s get on with this!

Into The Sun

It’s always a great way to start a movie to have a completely redundant scene at the beginning that has no effect on anything that happens for the entire duration of the movie. My theory as to why this scene exists is that they filmed the movie and realized there are no black people in it so they did a scene where a black guy gets shot and placed it as the opening bit for the movie. Story in a nutshell is that rivalling criminal organizations are going head to head in Japan and as the shit starts to hit the fan, they call Seagal to take out the other (the really bad –bad guys) bunch out. What immediately jumps out are the incredibly tasteless aerial shots that have been peppered throughout the early parts of the film with some kind of techno grids that look like a product of an 80’s sci-fi movie. Seagal is on point for this film though as there is no dubbing or use of doubles and he has even managed to rein his hair in by bringing back the ponytail.

The movie takes place mostly in Japan, some bits in Thailand, and Steve gets to show off his mastery of the Japanese language and customs. He even seems more expressive when he is talking Japanese. We follow The Seagull as he goes around being respectful to the important people of Japanese underground and he also meets numerous young hotties that all have a thing for him and most men seem to idolize him as he is some sort of swordmaster in this film. Seagal meets yet another young hot chick and he pops the big question to her, she says yes, the fatman gets to bone her. After this touching series of events he takes her to a tittie club, classy. There is even a comedic sidekick for Seagal who isn’t even annoying which is a rarity. Now finally we get to see some action at the end – outside a couple of short bits in the middle of the film – and the finale is quite good with tremendous practical gore effects and badass sword fighting, even some chick joins Seagal on his quest to kill some crooks. The good bits won’t save the film from being largely boring so overall I’d say, meh.

Submerged

Oh my eyes! The movie opens with a flashy, nausea inducing intro to get rid of those pesky epileptic people I guess. I do see some cool names alongside with Seagal during the opening credits, Gary Daniels and Vinnie Jones, perhaps this won’t be too bad. We cut to the cheapest looking toy which is supposed to fool us for a real plane. Then there is some bad guys as the toy plane takes photos that sends them to one of those important political figures we always have in these movies. Bad guys shoot down the plane and use a mobile app to brainwash few of the important person’s bodyguards who then shoot up everybody and then themselves. Gary Daniels is sent to kill the villains but he has been mindjacked as well, I guess, it’s really confusing. Well, he and his team have an epic fail and the ones who don’t get shot get captured. Now on to business as The Fatty himself slumbers in shackles and is aided by some epic rock music to see some random dude, time for the set-up.

So Seagal is some kind of expert military guy who once did a mission where they had to blow up something and it was the right call but it resulted in a political shitstorm so he and his team were thrown to jail. Now they get a chance for a full pardon if they go after these new bad guys and he isn’t told that the baddies have a mind-control device. Hilarity is to be had as they take out the evil guards silently and Vinnie Jones shoots one of those handy-dandy video game exploding barrels and as the huge fiery explosion kills a few of the guards he apologizes for the noise that comes once the guards fall into water, seriously now? They do their thing and kill a bunch of guys, free Gary Daniels, find a disc containing mind-control stuff and blow up the dam and escape in a submarine. That’s the first 30 minutes of the movie, and Seagal has a couple good fist fights and one scene of epicness but the film is muddled shit and I tell you, almost everything Steve says has been dubbed, there are only a handful of lines where you hear his own voice, it is ridiculous. Vinnie Jones has one good little scene which is good only due to its unintentional humorous value and Gary Daniels is utterly wasted as he does nothing but gets his ass kicked in a second. Overall, shit.

Today You Die

Well that didn’t take long. Straight away movie opens with Seagal getting out of bed and you bet he wasn’t under those blankets alone, he has a hot black chick this time. It is funny how he is always fully clothed whether he just wakes up or if he is having sexy time, then again we should be happy that he acknowledges his lacking physique. Here we have a movie where Steven Seagal plays a thief who rips off rich drug dealers and hands the loot out to people in need, or so we are told as we never really see him do either. So a Robin Hood story Seagal style, I’m up for that. The story actually goes through changes so many times throughout the movie that if I told what the storyline is I’d have to either just tell how it starts and you don’t get the real image of it or I’d have to pretty much tell how the entire movie plays out. Let’s just say that The Seagull intends to go legit but ends up getting screwed and thrown to jail where he breaks out of the next day and goes after the people who screwed him over.

We have some familiar faces in the movie, Randy Couture pops up to get his ass kicked and Chloe Moretz of Hit-Girl fame gets – what is her career highlight in my eyes – a hug from the Fatman. Seagal isn’t even dubbed but his stunt double has his work cut out for him as he does about 80% of Seagals fight scenes. The fights are actually quite good so I’m kinda hoping for the double to spark off on a career of his own even though I haven’t even seen his face. The little bits of hand-to-hand fighting that Seagal does himself are poor but the shootouts are decent and at times bloody. One quite impressive bit is a chase scene in Las Vegas with plenty of destruction and you have a couple of explosions to boot later on in the film as well. I’m surprised by this movie, even the action isn’t overedited crap and the story is told with cohesion, there is only one pointless bit which is Seagal’s girlfriend who has visions that in the end of the film prove to be redundant. Seagal himself though is lacking and the film doesn’t have much of that unintentional humor I watch these for and ends up being an okay DTV action movie on its own right, it just happens to have Seagal starring, decent entertainment.

Black Dawn

Steven Seagal had done only one sequel in his entire career and that was to his arguably best film Under Siege, until this. Black Dawn is actually a sequel to what could be his worst movie, The Foreigner. I cannot wait to see how this turns out. Opening credit sequence looks like something made with Windows Movie Maker and the camera work is so bad that if I called it amateur level it would be an insult to every amateur camera-operator and cinematographer out there. Seagal returns to his role as Jonathan Cold as he still seems to be a gun for hire but this time it turns out that he is some kind of black ops operative who is so classified that no one knows he is actually a good guy or even alive for that matter. Now why he breaks a criminal out of prison and helps him set up a deal to sell weapons grade plutonium for terrorists is asked in the movie, but never explained.

I do have to say that the movie isn’t as confusing as The Foreigner, as you have a storyline you are able to follow even if it is dumb for the most parts as I pointed out there. However there is little action and even less involving The Seagull himself. Whenever he bothers to do hand-to-hand combat it is the double doing the work as you have a close-up of Seagal thrown in the middle of the fight where it is obvious that for that particular shot Seagal isn’t most likely even told he is supposedly fighting at that very moment. Black Dawn was surprisingly good as it wasn’t horrible, it was only boring and bad.

I can feel the years of my life expectancy shaving off as I watch these movies but the Sensei is a strangely fascinating creature to observe on screen. It is almost as if I’m being taken to the bank… THE BLOOD BANK.