Half Past Dead

"The good. The bad. And the deadly."

The movie opens up with Steven Seagal, as undercover FBI agent - Sasha Petrosovich, easily fooling a lie detector test for some Mafiosos. Sasha is bent on busting these sleazy mobsters because they killed his wife. Once they are convinced he's one of them, it's onto some business. Sasha's partner in crime, Nick Frazier (Ja Rule) hooks him up with the usual gig- boosting fancy cars. Of course, being a snitch, Seagal had set Nick up, hoping he'd squeal on the boss. Instead, Ja Rule pulled out his pistols and has a shoot-out with a handful of heavily armed federal agents that ends with Seagal getting shot in the back. Everyone thought he was dead, but he wasn't... he was half-passed dead. The movie then fast-forwards to a revamped Alcatraz, tricked out with all the latest technology- they even got Playstations in the cells. It's here where Seagal plants himself (disguised in his do-rag) to try to get his partner Nick to snitch to him about some crimes that the mob boss has committed. Seagal and Ja Rule immediately hit-it off and have a real touching scene of apology, acting like an old married couple. What Sasha and the feds don't know is that some guy who stole 20 million dollars worth of federal gold has been sent to the new Alcatraz as well. He's there to test out the new hi-tech execution chamber. All that gold was never found and this guy plans on taking their whereabouts with him to his grave. Some crazy guy who works for the government doesn't want that to happen though. His goons and he break into Alcatraz and hold a bunch of people hostage, including some senator that was there to witness the execution. The bad guy and his posse start killing people and making demands for the gold, but their chopper crashes though the prison roof and so they need a ride out too. Seagal goes around killing off all of the henchmen, one of which he battles with like hang-tough (the American Gladiators competition). Sasha then rallies up all the inmates for a rebellion against the crazy guy and his gang. Theres a big boring gun-fight and most everyone dies except for Ja Rule and Seagal and the lead bad guy. He ends up taking off in an FBI chopper and takes the senator with him where he eventually tosses her out of it for Seagal to sky-dive after. The bad guy was caught, and Seagal hooks Ja Rule up with a pardon from his prison time for all of his help.

As you can clearly tell from the synopsis, this movie was pretty terrible. There was barely any real action, Seagal didn't break ANY bones, and his character's name was Sasha. Ja Rule does get his ass kicked by a girl though, so that earns Half Past Dead an extra half of a ponytail, totaling it up at 1.5 Ponytails.

Half Past Dead: 1.5 Ponytails

Submerged

"Underwater, Undercover."

In Submerged, Steven Seagal plays mercenary, Chris Cody. Cody and his team have been in prison for years after breaking protocol on a prior mission. When terrorists gain the ability to brainwash even a secret service agent into assassination Cody's gang are the only ones good enough to catch em. The only problem is, no one tells these guys they're dealing with brainwashers. It doesn't take these mercenaries long to come up with a plan and so they immediately overrun the terrorists brainwashing lair and start freeing prisoners. Little did they know the prisoners they were saving were more dangerous than the 50-60 terrorists +1 tank that 5 of them mowed down like it was D-day. From here they get into a stolen submarine. It takes all of about 10 minutes of the movie for them to figure out that they have brainwash victims, who's responsible for giving the terrorists the technology, get overrun by the brainwashed guys, kill all of the brainwashed guys and get the submarine blown up by a patriot missile, escaping narrowly. Now they go to Uruguay to take out the company that is paying an evil doctor to brainwash people into assassination. Throughout the rest there are a lot of boring parts involving capture and killing brainwashed dudes until it all finally comes to a head at an opera where the crew has to rescue the Uruguayan president from assassination. Once that is done, Seagal goes back to kill the evil doctor which he does easily. Then the survivors all go out to dinner with Cody and they have a good laugh over the whole ordeal.

One thing that this movie did have going was some of the priceless Seagal banter:
While fighting one of the two guys in the entire movie that he actually gets physical with, Seagal for some reason screams "COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!"
When Cody has to convince his team to come with him he says "Look, it's easy, you know. You could come with me, we do it right. We get out, we're free. Or you could stay in jail and get romantic with your boyfriend."
And at the end when they're all out to dinner Seagal looks at some of the food and says "that doesn't look so good, that looks like rabbit poop."

Unfortunately this movie, as mentioned only featured two fight scenes with Seagal, and they were both just lame henchmen and were disposed of easily. Seagal basically just played coach to his crew of misfits and didn't do hardly anything. Seagal raised his voice way too much also and he didn't even break any bones except maybe a guys nose. Also, as previously mentioned the movie is called Submerged and they're only in a submarine for about 10-15 minutes of the movie and probably only submerged for like 5 minutes. This is probably Seagal's worst movie ever. Ever.

Submerged: 1 Ponytail

Exit Wounds

"What can two men do against a gang of crooked cops? Whatever it takes."

In Exit Wounds Seagal stars as Orin Boyd, a Detroit cop who pushes the boundaries a little too far when he saves the vice president from terrorist. The catch? He threw the V.P. off of a bridge to protect him. For this Boyd is reassigned from his luxurious uptown precinct to the worst precinct it Detroit. It is here that he meets his new lady boss under embarrassing circumstances and gets on her bad side. She sends him to anger management where he meets Tom Arnold, a reporter with an attitude. Meanwhile, DMX and his sidekick are making drug deals with one of Boyd's fellow officers, Matt Montini, who is more than just undercover. Boyd eventually starts to catch onto DMX, and then Montini. Things get really confusing when Orin begins to uncover evidence that not only is Montini one of the bad-guys, but DMX is one of the good guys. All of Orin's nosing around isn't making him many friends in the precinct but he does pick up a sidekick along the way. Boyd, DMX and his sidekick use their brilliant detective work and connections with Tom Arnold to crack open the case to bust a gang of crooked, drug dealing cops that end up having higher connections than even Boyd would have suspected.


This movie really didn't have any vintage Seagal quotes and virtually no highlights, other than Seagal shooting down a helicopter with his pistol and throwing the V.P. off of a bride for basically no reason. Oh yea, he did do a break-dancing move to avoid a bullet while kicking a street tough in the head. That was pretty cool. This all happened within the first 5 minutes of the movie making it utterly disappointing. The movie did have some pretty good actors like Eva Mendez, Bill Duke, Anthony Anderson and Tom Arnold, but even they couldn't save this one. I give it an extra ponytail because Seagal did whisper each and every line.

Exit Wounds: 2 Ponytail

Belly of the Beast

"A father's rage knows no limit."

In Belly of the Beast, Seagal plays Jake Hopper, an ex-cia agent who quit the business after a terrible tragedy, which ended with Jake karate chopping a bad guy through the side of a wall and his partner accidentally shooting an innocent bystander. After 10 years of somewhat civilian life (with an occasional private gig) Hopper's daughter is caught up in a kidnapping. She is friends with a U.S. senator's daughter and the two are kidnapped by terrorists in Thailand. Jake catches wind of this through the grapevine and sets out for some serious vigilante justice. He renews his license to kill and reclaims his (now monk) ex-partner in Thailand. From there they meet up with an old "friend," Fitch, who has some old connections, and a handfull of Thai whores. Hopper and his sidekick, Sunti, moved their way slowly up the Thailand criminal food chain (which included a fight between Seagal and a whip-wielding transvestite) until they found out who was behind the kidnappings. After that it was only a matter of how long it would take for Hopper to kill everyone. While fighting the final boss, hopper is getting arrows shot at him. Instead of moving out of the way, he shoots one with his gun, head on, and then he splits another lengthwise with a sword while this battle raged on, there was a voodoo witch doctor putting voodoo curses on Hopper. In order to defend him a group of monks have a magical meditation battle with the witch doctor and kill him with their magic. Without the curse on him, Seagal was free to finish off his enemy with a really lengthy karate chop combo, followed by a double-fisted punch that killed him. From the beginning on, Seagal set the pace for this to be one of his most action packed movies and never let up until the end. He used the same martial arts technique that you see Neo use in the Matrix trilogy, only Seagal's character is man enough to use them in the real world, and against real people.

Other highlights of this action packed heart-stopper were:
While doing a off-the-books job for a friend, Hopper slithers dodges and dances around corners a big house like Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment. He then raids their fridge.
At one point hopper and Sunti are crashing an arms deal and shit hits the fan. Seagal bursts through the side wall of a train car and shoots 3 bad guys in midair. He then lands on a small rail-cart and moves down the tracks on his side shooting another 6 goons.
Hopper is in handcuffs at a Thailand police station after being arrested. While in cuffs, Seagal beats up 5 cops who have guns and clubs.
At one point Seagal is given a message to meet with a criminal who is being set up. The message was delivered to Hopper in magic ink on the naked chest of a Thai whore with huge tits.

Seagal had one funny line in this one: "You know something Fitch, you ain't nothin' but a trailer park bitch."

This whole movie was completely bad-ass. Seagal broke 6 different guys' arms and another two legs. He wore what was probably his most rugged ponytail and he eventually fell in love with a Thai whore. You combine that with a fully whispered dialog and incredible action and you get 5 ponytails.

Belly of the Beast: 5 Ponytails

"He's a cop. It's a dirty job... but somebody's got to take out the garbage." This movie is awesome. Just by looking at the back of the DVD case I knew this movie was a keeper. Only $9.49 on Amazon. And it might be worth checking out the soundtrack.
Brooklyn-born and-raised cop Gino Felino (Seagal) has seen many changes in "the neighborhood." There is a great cameo by Jerry Orbach from Law and Order as Gino's captain. The opening scene was absolutely brilliant. Seagal smashes a mans head through a passenger side window of a car, then throws the man through the front windshield. The shot freezes with a view out the front windshield and Seagal in the background.

But what sets everything in motion is this madman who guns down a cop in public, then shoots a woman in the head because she told him to move his car.

Once again Seagal shows us his animal lover instincts, because there is a scene where he sees a man throw a grabage bag with a dog in it into the street. And at the end of the movie finally meets back up with the individual that threw the dog away.

He drives through the ghettos of Brooklyn while The Beastie Boys "No sleep till Brooklyn" is playing. Here we see all the typical illegal activities that take place in Brooklyn, from hookers, front seat bj's, to drug deals. His character then proceeds to have an intense chase scene with this ruthless cop killer, Richie, with the dog riding shotgun.

In his first real encounter with the criminal scum he bludgeons onw man with salami, makes a man stab himself in the thigh with a butcher knife, and beats up another man, then takes the knife from first man's thigh and pins second guys hand to the wall.

During the greatest bar room fight I have ever seen in a movie, Gino rolls a cue ball into a small towel and proceeds to beat anyone who challenges him. A man named Tattoo gets all his front teeth knocked out but still has the courage to come back for more. And by the way, the bad guys in this movie really know how to rock wind suits. Gino also has a sweet fight with a man named "sticks."

In one of the bloodiest final showdowns ever, Gino manages to take on the rest of the thugs armed with only his pistol and shotgun. He blows one mans lower leg off, and also puts an end to the man named Tattoo. Seagal finally stabs his boyhood adversary and criminal scum, Richie, in the forehead with a corkscrew. Only after manhandling the wannabe mobster and wrecking a poor womans apartment.

The movie had some good one-liners, the best being, "Tell your brother I'm gonna cut of his head and piss down his throat!" This line was whispered in Seagal's best Brooklyn accent. This movie was full of action as well as blood. This was one of my favorite Seagal films that I've seen so far, I highly suggest renting this movie.

Out For Justice: 4 Pony Tails