HARD TO KILL (1990) - Classic Seagal revenge movie

As stupid as it may sound, I actually have a soft spot for Steven Seagal, as anyone who visits my blog would probably notice seeing as how I go out of my way to watch his flicks, which most people tend to avoid. Most of his films, okay... nearly all of his films rate highly on the crap factor, but in the '90s the guy had a decent enough run that ended with his biggest hit ever, Under Siege, which everyone seems to remember for the random topless scene rather than for its outrageous villains and good share of hilarious lines. Hard to Kill is probably his second best movie, and holds a special place in my heart for being my first Seagal flick. Aside from a truly terrible poster, it's really not that bad at all.

Mason Storm (Steven Seagal) is a badass detective working a major corruption case, and as the movie kicks off, he's snooping around a Mob meeting, trying to collect some evidence for an arrest. He gets video implicating some important government official ordering an assassination, but he's spotted and chased off. Storm calls his partner back in the office and tells him about what went down. Unknown to both of them though, two corrupt cops are on the other line listening in. Storm heads home, but not before managing to  interrupt a store robbery, beat four Mexican punks senseless, and pick up some champagne for the missus without breaking a sweat.

Family man by day, Aikido ass-kicking machine by night.

At home, he stashes the evidence he collected and gets into bed with his hottie wife. Displaying a very bad sense of timing, a bunch of goons bust through his bedroom door right as he's about to get some sexy time with the wife, and shoot them both, killing his wife and leaving Storm in terrible shape. They also manage to blast Storm's partner as well, and as Storm is wheeled into the hospital, he's pronounced dead. Storm is hard to kill though (get it, get it?), and has in fact fallen into a coma. Only one of Storm's friends in the department knows the truth, and keeps quiet about it.

Kelly LeBrock? More like... Kelly LeHot.

A few years later, Storm miraculously wakes up from his coma, no doubt motivated by the fact that his nurse Andy is played by the babetastic Kelly LeBrock. He pleads with the hospital staff to get him out of there, and soon enough word gets out of his recovery. The bastards who betrayed him realize he's alive and send more assassins to take him out. Storm has to save himself, and before long, he'll be building up his strength to kick some ass, save his long-lost son and get his hard-earned revenge. His main enemy is a well-known Senator, Vernon Trent (William Sadler), who has half the city's police department in his pocket and will stop at nothing to kill Storm once and for all.

Martial arts are good. Guns are better.

As usual, you get what you expect from Seagal movies. Acting should be the least of concerns in these, but aside from Seagal himself, everyone else in this one is pretty much terrible. Sadler plays a decent bad guy, and Kelly LeBrock is hot enough that it's easy to ignore the fact she cant deliver a single convincing line. The rest of the thugs are laughably bad, but truth be told it all just adds to the cheese factor that makes Hard to Kill a classic Seagal flick. The story is original enough that it stands out from most of the crap that Seagal has filmed over the years, and the action is top notch, with some memorable kills.

Open wide, pal!

Hard to Kill is definitely one of Seagal's best movies, even if it never quite matches the fun factor of Under Siege. It lacks a good, memorable villain, and is mostly predictable. It does have decent pacing, scattered comedy and classic Seagal action sequences which make for an entertaining movie. It's not high art, that much is obvious, but in the realm of manly, no-frills action films, it's good enough to merit a watch.

Best scene: Mason finds the guy who shot his wife, stabs a pool cue through his throat, and kicks him in the face while delivering his best line... (below)

Best quote: "That was for my wife! Fuck you and DIE!"




TL;DR - Not even a 7-year coma can stop Seagal from avenging his wife's death - 6/10

STRIKING DISTANCE (1993) - Willis, serial killers, and boats

As a huge action movie addict, it's no surprise I'm a big Bruce Willis fan. I think Die Hard might be the best action movie of all time, and most of Willis' other movies are pretty cool too and he's rightly regarded as one of the all-time classic movie tough guys. He beats people senseless, gets hammered drunk, shoots at least twenty guys per movie and always has great one-liners. That being said, I had never heard of Striking Distance before this week. No one ever recommended it to me, I never saw it on T.V., never even saw it on a Blockbuster shelf. So while cruising Imdb.com I saw it listed in Willis' filmography, so I figured, what the hell, it was probably worth a watch and set out to find a copy.

Just cruisin' with pop.

Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is a veteran cop with a big problem. He testified in a police brutality case against his partner, who just happens to be his psychotic cousin Jimmy DeTillo (Dennis Farina). Hardy comes from a family of police officers, with his father, uncle and two cousins serving as officers in the Pittsburgh police department. After Jimmy is found guilty of police brutality, every cop in town turns against Tom, considering him a traitor and a rat for selling out one of their own. In midst of all of this, Tom has been investigating a series of grisly murders of young girls by a killer known as the Polish Hill strangler. The investigation is going nowhere, with very few leads, but Tom believes that the killer is definitely a cop because of the way he always manages to stay several steps ahead of the police.

Sarah Jessica Parker is surprisingly hot as a cop. It's the uniform.

Driving to a police function with his father, they respond to an emergency call claiming the Polish Hill serial killer has been spotted. They join the high speed chase of the subject, nearly killing themselves several times and finally end up ramming the killer off the road, smashing both the cars in the process. Tom passes out, and wakes up to find his leg torn to shit and his father dead of a gunshot, with the killer nowhere in sight. After recovering from his injury, he's transferred out of the regular force and sent to the River Rescue unit as punishment for questioning the Polish Hill investigation. Tom is assigned a new partner, Jo Christmas (Sarah Jessica Parker), who he dislikes at first.

Meet Jimmy: Tom's psychotic, police-brutality loving cousin.

It's not long before more bodies start to show up in the river, and now it's apparently become personal, because all of the victims are women that Tom knew in the past. Tom and Jo begin to investigate the murders, and Tom becomes suspicious of Danny DeTillo (Tom Sizemore), his cousin and brother to the dead Jimmy, who dropped out of the force and has a lot of bad blood with Tom. Despite the  fact the police force hates his guts, Tom digs deeper into the murders and begins to doubt the official story about his father's killer, the identity of the Polish Hill serial killer, and the fact that his uncle and cousin might not be all the seem to be.

Little known '90s fact: cars could fly.

Even though Striking Distance might sound like it's got a complicated plot, it really doesn't. The story is pretty predictable, and I guessed the big plot twist near the end really early in the movie. Basic story aside, most of the characters aren't really interesting. Tom is a classic Bruce Willis cop character, with drinking problems, bad relationships with women, etc. Sarah Jessica Parker mostly just fills the love interest role and looks good in her dress or underwear. The villain, who I won't reveal even though the reveal is pretty obvious, isn't that good either. The best parts of the movie are undoubtedly when the action kicks in: the car chases and boat chases are good stuff, really frantic and some slick camera work. Surprisingly, the gun play is kind of low level for a 90s action flick, but what little there is makes up for it. Any music there might have been was totally forgettable.

The classic Bruce Willis shooting face!

Striking Distance is a basic action movie which doesn't even come close to matching the Die Hard series of awesomeness. The plot drags along and there just aren't enough thrills to make up for a weak story and even weaker cast apart from Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker. I enjoyed it, but wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again. It's just not that good.

TL;DR - Tries and fails to match Die Hard's excitement. Not bad, but not good either - 5/10

TERMINAL VELOCITY (1994) - Skydiving Charlie Sheen saves the day

Inspired by Charlie Sheen's recent hilarious interviews and his bi-winning ways, I decided it might be fun to take a look at some of Sheen's older movies from the 90s,  back when he was still a bankable action star. Originally, I meant to watch and review Navy SEALs, but I couldn't get my hands on a copy, so I settled for the next best thing: a movie about Charlie Sheen as a sky diving instructor who fights Russian spies and mobsters. The plot makes about as much sense as Charlie's twitter feed, but rest assured, plenty of good laughs are to be found.

"Are you one of my goddesses?"

The movie opens with a blonde chick having an angry conversation over the phone in Russian, talking about how she's been compromised and it's time to leave Tucson. All of a sudden, some thugs break into her house, grab her and start to torture her, asking where they can find her sister. She refuses to give her up and they kill her. The scene switches to a skydiving school, where 'Ditch' Brodie (Charlie Sheen) is one of the hotshot instructors with a bad reputation. His latest stunt involved him dropping down into a 8-year old's birthday party (instead of the intended bachelorette party) wearing leather pants and with his ass showing. On top of that, the FAA has been investigating him for other safety violations.

The glorious, glorious '90s.

A pretty blonde named Chris (Nastassja Kinski) shows up to Ditch's company, asking for a first time lesson in skydiving. Ditch finds her pretty hot and agrees to take her up for her first jump. While getting ready for the jump, Chris says she saw another plane outside the window. When Ditch goes to the cockpit to investigate, he comes back and sees Chris has in fact, gone full retard and fallen out of the plane. He dives after her, trying to save her, but her chute won't open and she is killed. Ditch is distressed, and soon enough a safety inspector named Pinkwater (James Gandolfini) shows up to investigate the girl's death. Pinkwater seems to be really interested in finding out as much as he can about the girl. Ditch does a little digging by himself, and after breaking into Chris's apartment, realizes she'd been lying to him.

Unbelievable plot twist? YOU BETCHA.

He realizes she had faked her own death, and they eventually meet again. Chris reveals she's actually Krista Moldova, an ex-Russian spy on the run from the same guys who killed her sister earlier in the movie. It turns out that Pinkwater and his crew are ex-KGB mobsters, planning to steal a shitload of gold bars to finance a coup back home in Russia. Ditch and Krista will have to stop Pinkwater and his boys before they can get away with the gold, and prevent a new Cold War.

Don't worry, it's just a Cadillac.

Terminal Velocity is pretty much what you'd expect from an action movie starring Charlie Sheen. It's got heaps of  hilarious one-liners, sex jokes, and close ups of Sheen making weird faces. Charlie does a decent job with his character, and his comedy flows well with the action.. The girl  is decent enough as well, seeing as how she's pretty much unknown. Everyone else is as you'd expect, crappy. Gandolfini's okay, but everyone else seems to have taken their acting lessons from Billy Madison. The best part about the movie are definitely the stunts, like the scene where Charlie drives a Cadillac out of a flying plane (pretty epic shit actually), or jumps from one plane to another.

Yes, that's Charlie Sheen riding a rocket. WINNING.

Sadly, they don't really have a chance in hell of saving this pic from being anything but a cheesy, overacted action fick. It doesn't really matter all that much though, since a lot of it is tongue in cheek and the movie works much better when you've got a couple beers in you anyway. Watch it for the laughs and cheap thrills.

TL;DR - Classic Sheen actioner. Check your brain at the door and stay bi-winning. - 6.5/10

UNDER SIEGE (1992) - Steven Seagal's first (and last) great movie

I think it's safe to say that Steven Seagal movies are somewhat of an acquired taste, like chopped liver, driving Oldsmobiles, taking a dip in Tijuana hotel swimming pools, and sipping Four Loko with dinner. Growing up as a kid raised in the 90s, I was lucky since it was in this decade that Seagal's career reached its peak (however brief it actually lasted). My parents were pretty cool at the time, seeing as how they let me join in on watching those glorious R-rated action movies on weekends, and about the only off-limits things were the gratuitous, bouncing titty scenes or the really gory stuff, and as a result, I've seen just about every Seagal movie ever made. I think I can safely say that Under Siege is by far the best flick he's ever made, and it might be the only one really worth watching.

Can't have a Seagal movie without brutal knife fights.

The USS Missouri is one of the last battleships in the US Navy, and she's about to be retired out of service. The President has decided that the ship's nuclear missiles will be removed before her decomissioning, so the ship departs on her last voyage from Pearl Harbor to California. Aboard the Missouri is Chief Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), who works as a cook in the ship's galley, is good friends with the Captain, and one of the most popular guys on the boat, as evidenced by the fact that he has dance-offs with the other galley crew. Also aboard the battleship is Commander Krill (Gary Busey), an officer who hates Ryback and is an overall asshole. Krill orders Ryback to stop cooking and clear out the galley, since he is bringing food and entertainment by helicopter for a surprise birthday party for the ship's Captain. Ryback gets suspicious, and ends up punching Krill in the face, which leads to Krill locking him up in the meat freezer.

Gary Busey + Playboy playmates =  the winning formula for 90s action movies.

The helicopter arrives, bringing a rock band, caterers, and "Miss July '89" Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak) for the party. Soon enough, all hell breaks loose when members of the band and caterers start killing officers on the ship. The band is actually a gang of ex-CIA mercenaries, led by William Stranix (Tommy Lee Jones). Stranix and Krill, working together, are planning to steal the nuclear Tomahawk missiles, smuggle them out via submarine, and sell them off to the black market. To make sure no one interferes with their plan, Krill shoots the Captain, and sends men to kill Ryback as well. It's too bad for Krill though, since Ryback ain't just a cook: he's an ex-Navy SEAL who enjoys stabbing dudes and loves building bombs, booby traps and all sorts of other wicked shit. Ryback escapes and sets off to save the day. He finds a new partner in the half naked Jordan, (who pops out of a birthday cake with glorious boobage exposed, of course), and they then have to deal with plenty of Stranix's mercenaries, stop the nuclear annihilation of Hawaii, and survive plenty of knife fights.

Tommy Lee Jones is hilarious as the deranged Stranix.

What undoubtedly makes Under Siege better than all the other Seagal movies is the supporting cast, which is outstanding. You couldn't have picked a better duo than Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones to play unhinged psychopaths and have an end result as satisfying and entertaining. These two guys made this movie - you hardly notice Seagal's and Eleniak's stiff acting, or the flimsy plot, since Stranix and Krill are such fun characters. A lot of action movies take themselves too seriously and end up as $1.99 bargain bin fillers. Under Siege follows the Die Hard formula (hey, if you're gonna copy someone, copy from the best) pretty well, mixing some comedy between the shootouts, fist fights and assorted macho moments.

Gary Busey dressed as a woman. His best work to date.

This flick is one of the best pure action movies of the 90s, and has aged pretty well all things considered. Yeah, it's a Die Hard clone. So what? It's an example of how to make a good derivative movie. If you only see one Steven Seagal movie in your lifetime, make sure it's Under Siege.

TL;DR - Steven Seagal's only good movie & classic 90s action flick - 8.5/10

PASSENGER 57 (1992) - "Always bet on black."

In the early 1990s, action movies were close to the pinnacle of perfection. They had everything a man movie needs: absurd plots, half-hour long gunfights, ultra-cool synth soundtracks, etc. There was one thing missing though. The decade that gave us Rambo, John McClane, every Arnold role, and all those generic Van Damme movies had few notable black dudes starring in their own action flicks. In stepped Wesley Snipes to save the day for Hollywood, and for a few years, he almost A-list material. Today, poor old Wesley might be locked up in prison for not paying taxes, but in 1992 he was legit. And it was this movie right here that kicked off an eventful career of ass-kicking, drop-kicking,  face-punching and tax evasion  - Passenger 57.

Only Wesley Snipes can rock this outfit. Don't even try it, man.

Passenger 57 starts off with Charles Rane (Bruce Payne), a master terrorist (is there any other kind?) about to get some plastic surgery to avoid capture by the FBI. Right before the surgeon makes the first cut, Rane realizes he's being set up by the feds and slices the good doc's throat with a scalpel and tries to make a run for it. I said try, because he ends up getting run over by a cop car and taken into custody.

While Rane's ass is sent to jail, we see ex-cop John Cutter (Snipes) working at an airline, teaching security lessons. After a rough day at the job, his executive big shot friend Sly Delvecchio (Tom Sizemore, before he started doing loads of coke)  offers him a job at his company, which Cutter eventually accepts. In the meantime, we see that the FBI, in all its infinite wisdom, has decided to transport Rane, the world's most dangerous man, aboard  a regular commercial flight, with only two cops to escort him. Terrorists: 1, Government Planners, 0.

Sitting next to a murderer is only slightly worse than sitting next to that kid that keeps kicking your seat.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of an action movie if Rane just killed both guards and flew off to Tahiti to drink tequila shots on the beach with supermodels for the rest off his life. No sir. By a stroke of luck, John Cutter happens to be on the very same flight.

Rane is such an evil, criminal mastermind of great skill that he has managed to put his own people aboard the plane. In a matter of minutes once the plane takes off, his guys kill both FBI agents and take over the plane. It's then up to Cutter to take back the plane and capture Rane, with only a stewardess to help him out. In the course of the movie, Cutter will jump out of a moving plane, punch a French guy in the throat, hit that French ponytail wearing bastard with a golf club in the balls, ride a motorcycle dangerously (why of course), beat up some redneck cops, and deliver some classic one-liners.

Tax problems already, Wesley?

I watched Passenger 57 with my dad as a kid, and at the time we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Since I was about 8 or 9, anything rated R was just about as close to heaven on earth as it got. My dad and I watched the movie again this week for nostalgia's sake, and fun was had by all. The movie has aged pretty well, except for the soundtrack, which is just as cheesy and lame as it was back in the 90s. To be fair though, most movies from this decade suffer from the same thing, so it's not really that much of a drawback. Snipes does a believable job, and though he won't win any Oscars for his work, he's entertaining and he's easy to root for. Bruce Payne tries a bit too hard as the English-accented terrorist, and he isn't a particularly memorable villain.

Overall, not a bad movie - just what you'd expect from the typical 90s action/thriller mix. Good for a watch if you've never seen it, or if you have a massive, unexplained celebrity crush on Wesley Snipes and his questionable clothing choices during this decade.


TL;DR - It's like Die Hard. On an airplane. And the good guy is black. - 6/10