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Sick Product of a Sick System

Pretty Good

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Concerned about potential collaboration between a ruthless Mexican drug cartel and an Islamic terrorist organization a retired assassin by the name of "John Harmon" (Steven Seagal) is called upon to foment discord between the two groups who are meeting in Istanbul to cement their agreement. He is also given an alternate assignment to take out a specific target responsible for an airplane bombing months earlier. Since both organizations are large and well protected the first thing he does is to assemble a small team which includes a beautiful American agent named "Zara Hayek" (Jemma Dallender) and a former special forces operative with a penchant for electronic devices by the name of "Matthew Sharp" (Russell Wong). Needless to say, although both of them are good with weapons and hand-to-hand fighting, the majority of the killing is left for John who makes it look almost effortless. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie had an interesting plot but it suffered from poor editing and bad direction. For starters, there didn't seem to be a smooth transition from one scene to another which gave the film a low-quality and uneven effect. Likewise,there were some scenes which tended to focus on extended fight sequences--and John's martial abilities—even though the events at the time mandated that he finish off his opponent quickly in order to help one of his colleagues in a desperate situation. But then, why make an effort to save your partner right away when you can play cat-and-mouse with a bad guy and demonstrate your superior technique in the process? In short, I believe that with more competent direction this film had the potential to be a much better movie than it turned out to be. However, because the movie lacked that necessary component I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

In the bonus segment of the DVD of "Contract to Kill," we see the film's direction instructing an actor playing a corpse, "Stop breathing!" In another scene, the assistant director discusses how he plans to get one of the actors "airborn." These directorial challenges point to the essence of this film as a martial arts flic.Steven Seagall recycles the single character for which he is known: a super hero thwarting a horde of dastardly villains. In this film, he team up with a man and a woman in a kind of autonomous CIA unit. The first goal is to thwart an important meeting of a drug cartel and a terrorist group in Istanbul.The plot thickens when it turns out that beyond the meeting, one of the terrorists is planning to infiltrate America. So, the action shifts to locating and liquidating the villain.While there are some first-rate martial arts sequences, the film gets bogged down in inconsequential dialogue and slow-paced drones tracking the villains.The gravely-voiced Seagal is good in his familiar character, and he is supported by a solid cast. But "Contract to Kill" needed some tightening in the script and more fully developed characters to sustain interest. There was a lot of cross and "double cross" in this film. But the real double cross was on the audience, who did not walk away from a very memorable film.

Another few months, and another Seagal DTV movie. I must say, things are looking worrying for old Steven - he sounds incredibly croaky in this movie and fatter than ever before. Guy needs to sort his health out or one of the all-time greats might die...Aside from that, you're probably wondering if this is worth watching if you enjoy a bit of Seagal. The answer is no.The plot...something about Mexican cartels making a deal with Muslim extremists and Seagal and his team have to stop it. Really isn't much to talk about here. There seems to be a deliberate attempt to touch on current topical events, but it fails really, especially Seagal's ending monologue. Not even worth me expanding on it. It's just poor. Very poor.Directing and cinematography is alright for a Seagal DTV, although there is a massive bit of text that fills up the screen every time they go to a different location to tell us where it is which looks quite silly. Quick cuts manage to cover up any use of body doubles for Seagal. Keoni Waxman has directed Seagal DTVs plenty of times and has shown himself to be capable enough so there shouldn't be concern on this front anyway. Oh yeah, and there's quite a bit of green screen, but that's not exactly unexpected.The characters and acting...yeah, they leave a lot to be desired. No character is memorable, at all, and everyone just seems to be acting like they're waiting for the director to shout "cut" and they can get their paycheck and move on. Not even a modicum of effort from Russell "irrelevant since the 90s" Wong, or Jemma "I'm here to have my breasts fondled by Steven" Dallender, or anyone else for that matter.The movie is also largely devoid of action until the latter parts, and well, it isn't even any good. I know you can't expect much from Seagal these days, but you'd expect the other actors to try and do something but they just don't.Don't waste your time. It's a boring mess that is completely forgettable. Seagal's made much better DTV movies, so why even bother with this?

So in Contract to Kill Stephen Seagal travels to Turkey to take on some terrorist drug dealers, which I thought was interesting as I can't remember when the last time Istanbul was in the movie as the center for espionage and trafficking (No Wait it was Taken 2), but as it turns out, the Mexicans are still the drug traffickers and the Arabs are still the terrorist. Oh well, so much for something different. At least it's a different setting I guess.Seagal plays...I don't know the character's name and let's be honest, it doesn't really matter, cause I can't remember the last time he did not play a retired CIA agent living in(Insert any foreign country) who was brought back into the game because his fat tired ass is somehow that good at stopping the crappy enemy he's going after.I should have known where the movie was going, as Seagal's introduction included Steven spending 20 mins being interviewed by a CIA agent who's trying to convince Steven (And the rest of us) that only the big man with the keg can save the world or something. Then as an extra added bonus Steven sees two gringos who can't keep their hands off some waitress and goes over and some how beats them both while sitting on his ass, then he turns around and puts his hands all over the waitress who could be his granddaughter.Seagal puts together a team that features dude from Vanishing Son, Russel Wong, who looks like he could have been more impressive in this film if he did not have to tone it down to make Seagal look better.The third man on the team is some eye candy whose role as a covert black bag agent makes no sense instead for being eye candy. Seagal treats her like she's been in the game as long as him but she doesn't even look like she's past 30. Her one purpose is to make old fat Seagal look like he's still got it. There's one part where Seagal has a small love scene with this chick. Normally I'm a fan of needless nudity from hot girls, but it just puts more focus on the fact that Seagal is just an old man who wants the world to believe that he can still get the girl. Not only that but this "experience capable agent" gets kidnapped, so that Seagal can rescue her.Some Seagal style action, but not much with Seagal repeating the same moves over and over and using multi angles and fast cuts to try to make it more exciting. It's starting to get lame now that it's 30 or so years in the action movie biz. Seagal has never come up to an opponent as skilled as him in Aikido to at least be able to make him stumble. Not bleed or fall down just push him Back a little, that's all. Yes, Seagal is a very big menacing dude, he still is, but come on.This may not have been such a problem, but for the most part, fat Seagal spends a lot of time sitting down in the movie. I mean literally sitting in a car, sitting at a desk, and sitting while doing some of the fight scenes. It tells me something about how lazy the filmmakers are putting this together.Man, there was so much talking, and it was all though guy talk, too. By the good guys, by the bad guys. I think Seagal, I think action and in an action film tough guy talk should be minimal to one liners, not these over glorified speeches about how awesome they are. I'll give credit that one speech that Seagal himself had with one of the bad guys that was pretty good, but it was only one in a sea of really really bad ones, so it did nothing to make the film better.Half way through you realize it's an espionage movie. Not really Seagal's cup of tea and not what I came to the movies to watch him do, and unfortunately for Seagal, he did nothing to change my mind.Overall Contract to Kill feels like it's screaming Steven should retire. I don't think any one loves Seagal so much, you are cool wasting 90 mins watching him sit and talk with the enemy than go for it. They're better Fat Seagal action movies than this one. Find that one over Contract to Kill.