Hard To Kill

... Steven Seagal is HARD TO KILL.

In Seagal's second feature film, he stars as the bad-ass, respect demanding, ex-detective, PI - Mason Storm. Storm follows a lead and finds himself in a dark alleyway recording a meeting between high-ranking mobsters and a renowned politician. The mafia agrees to take down a current senator's jet so that the politician bad guy can take his chair in the senate. Before he has a chance to bust this crooked s.o.b. assassins are sent to kill Storm and his family, along with anyone else who knows about the audio and video recordings. The hitmen are obviously clowns and even though they kill Mason Storms wife, they fail to even shoot his kid, who slips out a window, and after getting their asses handed to them by an injured Seagal, they only critically wound him. Storm was technically pronounced dead, but then came around, and survived in a coma. An old friend of Storm's from internal affairs is the only person, other than the doctors to know, so, for their own protection, it was kept a secret and his son's death was fained as well. After seven years Seagal's character finally comes around and he is aided by a nurse that has been checking out his dick for almost a decade. For the rest of the movie, Seagal recovers and trains back into fighting shape (There was a kick ass montage, with Chinese music, of Seagal training and using acupuncture for recovery) while evading bad guys and hunting down clues to who killed his family. Storm eventually exposes the senator, with some help from his friends, and reunites with his son, killing a bunch of bad guys along the way.

This film's highlights include:
While buying liquor, Seagal encounters some robbers. He put one of them in an ankle lock and broke his leg as hard as he could.
Seagal actually yelled "mother fucker!!" then he broke every one of a guys fingers, all with several shotgun slugs in his chest and shoulder.
In one fight scene, Storm broke a bad guy's arm, literally, in half, then slammed him head-first into a china cabinet.

There were some pretty entertaining Seagal quotes in this one:
Seagal, to himself, after hearing his enemies signature catch phrase, 'You can take that to the bank.' says "I'm gonna take you to the bank... to the blood bank."
Storm shot a shotgun between the bad guy's legs and missed. He then said "I missed. I never miss. They must have been smaller than I thought.
When Storm finally found the assassin that killed his wife, he killed him with a broken pool cue through the neck. Then he told him, "take your cue, and die."
Storm killed a crooked cop and said "Now you're a good cop."

Despite some of the hilarious witty humor that Seagal provides us in Hard to Kill, it was just way too slow moving and there wasn't enough action and Seagal raised his voice a few times. There weren't a lot of broken arms, but the ones that were broken were pretty sweet and Seagal's character's name in this one was MASON STORM. Those were the biggest reason that Hard To Kill earned itself an extra ponytail and a half here for a total of 2 and a half ponytails.

Hard To Kill: 2.5 Ponytails

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

"...Only one hero stands in the way."

Dark Territory brings Seagal's most famous character, Casey Ryback, back into action. This time Ryback is rendezvousing with his niece to mourn his brother's death. The two are traveling via train, which coincidentally is also serving as transportation to the most dangerous terrorists on the planet. The terrorists include a computer super-genius and a rogue military specialist trained by, you guessed it, Ryback himself. The bad guys' mission is to use an untraceable weaponized satellite to destroy Washington DC. The computer nerd genius villain happened to have designed the satellite and it's software, and so high-jacking it was easy. Keeping Casey Ryback from foiling their plans... not so easy.

Here are some of the movie's highlights:
At one point Seagal made a home-made firebomb out of coconut oil, rum and ice.
Ryback broke one guys arm, then all of his fingers on both hands, and finally, kicked him in the face.
Seagal set 3 bad guys on fire.
He flipped one dude by the arm and then broke his arm and neck at the same time.
In the middle of a knife fight with the toughest bad guy, Ryback lost his knife and was in a standoff with the other guy. He eaily disarmed him and then had an insanely long combo of punches, karate chops and kicks.
Finally, Seagal killed the last bad guy by shutting a helicopter's door on his hand so that the hanging villain lost all of his fingers and fell to his death.

There were a couple of good one-liners in this one:
At one point, Ryback gets shot in the shoulder with a high-powered rifle and says to his side-kick, "You think this is being shot? This ain't being shot."
In another scene, one of the bad guy's is distracted by a girls cleavage and then killed by Seagal's character and Seagal taunts the dead guy, "Tits to die for, huh?"

Even though this was probably one of Seagal's more highly funded films, it was definitely not one of his finest movies. Still, it had a hand-full of really violent scenes and Seagal whispered every line, as usual. He didn't break a lot of bones though, which is the biggest reason why I am only giving Dark Territory two ponytails.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: 2 Ponytails

Shadowman

"Either you're with him...or you're dead."

Shadowman, one of his latest films, features Seagal playing widowed, former secret agent Jack Foster. Foster is now the head of a fortune 500 company and spends his spare time teaching karate and buying his daughter horses. Jack's world gets turned totally upside-down when he takes a trip with his daughter to Romania and an old colleague slips him some sensitive materials. His daughter is kidnapped, his friend killed and his head put on the block by another conveniently placed, former colleague. From this point on Seagal's character spends the rest of the film searching for his daughter and finding answers about what he has been given, and who is after it.

The highlights of this movie included the following:
Seagal's character, while teaching karate class, has a student ask him to teach him about fighting using the power of Chi. For this Seagal double fist punches him with Chi and kills him. Then he proceeds to kick all his students asses, including flipping one guy by the arm like 5 times.
Foster, trapped in a room by his double-crossing ex-colleague, builds a homemade arsenal out of pipes and junk laying around the room in a matter of minutes. The weapons, built in McGyver fashion, included two different types of deadly guns. He kills about 5 guys using these weapons.
At one point Jack bitch-slaps a bartender as hard as he can... because he lied to him.
Toward the end of the film, Foster uses his pistol to shoot down a helicopter (more specifically he blew it up in mid-air).
Seagal's character takes out the two boss bad guys in particularly violent fashion. The first guy, he gouges his eyes out. The second guy, he double fist Chi punches him and the back of the guys skull blew out.

Seagal had two very entertaining one liners in this one:
"It ain't over till the wolf howls." and "Oh man, that's no free-base accident. That's syphilis."

This movie is proof that, even though he weighed in at what looked to be at least 240lbs, he's still got it. He broke four guy's arms, shot at least four guys by turning their own guns around on them, whispered every line and kicked a lot of ass. For this, I give Shadowman 4 ponytails.

Shadowman: 4 Ponytails

THE PATRIOT

"EVERY SECOND COUNTS."

The plot involves Canadian patriot Dr. Wesley McClaren (Seagal) who has to foil the plot of a militia to release a deadly virus known simply as NAM-37. The source of the toxin is traced to a local self-styled rebel militia leader, Floyd Chisolm. McClaren gains access to a secret underground laboratory where he used to work and tries to discover a cure for this deadly virus.

After having taken blood samples from his daughter Holly (who seems to have a fondness for horses), and a Dr. Ann White Cloud, who both seem to be unaffected by the virus, Seagal's character learns the source of their immunity. They have been drinking tea made with a specific wild herb that's known to native American healers which renders them completely resistant to the virus.

Upon learning this information, Wesley and the good doctor White Cloud are captured by Floyd and his gang. Unfortunately for the rag-tag militia, McClaren is a specialist in weapons and self-defense. He proceeds to kick a guy through a wall and another through a vending machine, as well as break a militiaman's nose and eventually disables the militia. Just in the nick of time a biological protection team is able to get word of Seagal's cure and go out to the fields and pick all the flowers they can find and drop them by helicopter over the town, telling the people to boil them and drink the liquid.

In the end, Seagal, White Cloud, and some random indians are seen riding horses down main street, followed by Holly and her mini horse.

Patriot: 2 Ponytails

OUT FOR A KILL

"OUT FOR REVENGE. OUT FOR PAYBACK."

Breaks 2 necks, one via bamboo sticks.
One belly slice and stab with katana.
One snapped arm.
One crushed skull.
Two eyes poked out with fingers.
5 sets of breasts.
Throws a guy out a second story building in little china.
Throws a Katana through a window at a guy on the street below and cuts his head off.


"The Crane flys above the river, peaceful surface hides danger below." -Robert Burns

THE FOREIGNER

"If they think they can stop him they're dead wrong"

Meet Jon Cold a professional secret agent for hire. With a taste for fine wine and even finer women. With fist pumping action Jon Cold travels his way across Europe to to deliver a package to a big wig in Germany. Along the way Cold runs into goons trying to stop the package from making it to the recipient. With gun wielding henchmen and a fast talking black brit Cold did not have an easy delivery.

Highlights
Jon Cold uses a decoy package to blow up an entire train station.
Fighting with a hired hit Jon Cold executes a uncountable amount of blocks and punches.
Jon Cold uses the patent arm twist to throw henchmen into cold water.

Seagals whisper in this movie was probably at the lowest possible decibel a human being can speak.

Best one liner: "If you touch it again I will shoot your two inch dick off"


PONYTAIL RATING: 2 PONYTAILS

Welcome to Breaking Bones w/ Steven Seagal...

Welcome, everyone, to what is probably the most exciting Steven Seagal blog on the internet. Breaking Bones with Steven Seagal is a blog that will take you on the exciting journey of your favorite pony-tailed action hero's entire career as the biggest movie star on the planet. Over the next few weeks we will be viewing Seagal's entire collection of Academy Award caliber super-hits and breaking them down for you.

Here's how it works. First of all, we will watch any one of Seagal's masterpieces. Which movie is viewed by whom has already been predetermined, and the order of viewing is random. Once the movie is over, we will bring ourselves down as much as humanly possible to try to relieve ourselves from the high you get from watching a Seagal flick. Finally, we will report to you just how kick-ass the Seagal classic turned out.

Each movie will be rated by either Nate or Jay and Stu. Depending on how awesome a film was, it will get a rating of either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 ponytails. Every film will have the opportunity to earn ponytails for stuff like the amount of broken arms credited to Seagal's character, the percentage of Seagal dialog that is whispered and Seagal's trademark action hero character names (ie. Mason Storm from Hard to Kill)- you get the point.

You already knew Seagal was a martial arts, Hollywood super genius, but this is your chance to learn just how close to being God he really is. In the words of the master himself, "les doit."